I was hurriedly running an errand when
my phone began to buzz. Grabbed it and saw a text message
from my youngest son with these cryptic words: “I
am safe from the fire. No worries.” Now THOSE are
words intended to calm a mother’s heart! Right.
Heart rate probably reached 200 in those few seconds.
I stopped the car, tried to phone him and
couldn’t get through. A few minutes later, he reached
me and said, “We think there was an explosion in
our building. My office mates and I raced down 30 floors
to the street and saw smoke everywhere. Check the news
and you’ll find out more. I’m walking 40 blocks
home—subway system is shut down. Phones barely working—probably
can’t get through again for a while. Don’t
worry: we’re all safe.” “All”
in this case, meaning he, his two brothers, my two daughters-in-law,
and my two grandchildren, all of whom live and work in
Manhattan.
Well, I checked the local news in the car,
and heard nothing about some sort of terrorist attack
in NYC, so I figured it must not be too bad. Got home
and discovered that there had been an underground transformer
explosion on the corner where my son worked and it was
so massive that it shook the buildings nearby. However,
I was intrigued to notice that the Australian News Service
reported that a building had crumbled to dust! Fortunately,
they were seriously overstating the case.
But there was dust everywhere. Photos showed
it billowing out of the ground. And all this forcefully
reminded me again that we as humans are but dust ourselves.
In the grand scheme of things, our lives are so very,
very short. In the Bible, we are compared to grass, growing
one day and thrown into the fire the next. Poof. All gone,
disappeared, mostly not remembered.
I am one of those with the more melancholy
temperament who is prone to ask, “Why are we here?
For what purpose do we exist?” Some, of course,
have concluded that there is no real meaning to life.
If that is the case, why not live fully for one’s
own pleasure, with no concern about how the pursuit of
that pleasure may affect others? I find that conclusion
both disturbing and destructive. It leads to a hopeless
societal structure and to a hollow individual structure.
I believe that God, the Creator of All,
has very much given purpose to life, and especially to
that life called “human”—for it is humanity
that is meant to image God to the world. We, in our lives
and loves, in our work and service, in our fun and families,
are meant to show the world the wholeness and the holiness
of God. And when each of us individually returns to dust,
we have the privilege of leaving a heritage that is marked
by goodness.
That sounds like a life worth living.
See you in church.
Christy
The Rev. Dr. Christy Thomas, Pastor, Krum
UMC
Questions or comments about this article?
Please contact me at christy@krumumc.org
or phone the church office at 940-482-3482.
