Trinity Episcopal Church

December 14, 2008

For many, the holidays can be a difficult time with the absence of a loved one who has gone on before us. We can miss them even more during Christmas. I used to keep a journal during my time of loss and grief, and I found this Christmas poem I wrote back in 1998. As I was walking through the valley of the shadow of death, I began to emerge and find hope in God---which is the true message of Christmas. Someone wrote, “Embrace the question of ‘Why?’ and it will become an avenue to God.” This was true in my case. God walked through the valley with me, and I know God will with you too.
Fr. Rick

Why Me?

Why not me?
Am I above the next person
Deemed higher in God’s eyes?
Am I so perfect that grief should be eluded
And by my beckoning, suffering to another be tied?

Should my life
Be under a more nobler grace,
Selected for those whose destiny it earns?
Am I not subject to nature’s own ravaging surge
Or should physic’s precise cycle, but for my preciousness,

In God’s Name is justice
To set rule in His kingdom eternal.
For what purpose do our trials in awful bitterness blend?
But a mysterious, forever, absolute, final Word from Him, and
Suffering, with deep nails, short lived, finds hope that will not end.

Trinity Episcopal Church

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December 14, 2008