Seriously God...a man can't skip one week of cutting his grass?
Life's sharp turns can be jarring, but we traverse within a marvelous light.
Driving into my neighborhood from the main road, I saw my neighbor cutting his lawn like any other end of summer day. As I waved to him, I thought to myself this man still has to cut his grass like everyone else? If this grass knew what this man has gone through in the last few months, I am sure it would decide to slow down and give him a break. But our lawns do not slow for anyone.
A few months ago, my youngest son was playing with two neighborhood boys at a house close to the entrance off the main road. Eventually he came home for dinner and said goodbye to his friends—all normal neighborhood stuff.
After dinner, my wife left to pickup my oldest from some sports practice. Upon return, back at the entrance of the neighborhood, my wife and daughter were met with a swarm of police cars. A red car was parked to the side with the no sign of damage, but in the middle of the street was Kipp, a young boy who was just playing with my son an hour before, kneeling on the ground head down. All was normal that day until it wasn’t—Kipp had been hit by a car. The boy, with his mother by his side, was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance, their dad trailing behind in their car.
Kipp is a survivor and his parents and siblings are fighters, and they have been battling for his recovery ever since. He has progressed a lot, and his dad writes these amazingly detailed and emotion-filled updates for all who follow along. The entire community has rallied around the boy and his family in a unified cry of #Kippstrong47. As a dad, I couldn’t imagine what he has gone through these last few months, but there is hope. When I saw him cutting his grass it felt so normal yet cruel that he had to do such a mundane thing in the midst of such life changing events. Perhaps it was nice distraction I hope.
Life truly stops for no one. Even if you think about the momentous events in global history, off somewhere in the world some mundane thing was happening. It may sound a little sacrilegious, but even in the moment of Christ’s death and resurrection somebody in the world was cooking a meal or cleaning up their house. Life doesn’t stop. When we tell stories, it is as if nothing else is happening in the world but the story and actions of the main character(s). In any Marvel superhero movie those characters crucial moments literally decide the fate of an unassuming city, planet, or universe. But our lives aren’t Marvel movies. For Kipp’s dad and family everything changed that day. For our family, life as we have known it continued when our youngest came back for dinner. Yet, this man and I both have to cut our grass weekly because it is the summer and it’s rained a lot this year. When we mow, no movie music plays in the background in some epic attempt to dramatize our lives. Life just continues.
Towards the end of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Ring’s saga, a character named Samwise Gamgee exclaimed that, “All sad things become untrue,” after finding out his dear friend, Gandalf, was now alive. Someone talked about that line and connected it to this verse:
Revelation 21:4 He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
Tolkien knew our lives were culminating to something new. We who are in the Lord—poor, rich, weak, and strong—head towards the same end.
Sometimes we wish life could freeze in place or reverse to a better time and stay put. I wish that a lot. But if life were to ever stop we would never get to that time in the future of Revelation 21:4…to a new order of things. I look forward to that new order. I am sure many of us do after experiencing the irreversible difficulties of life. Tolkien would have known the horrors of two world wars in his life, so I am sure he looked forward to that new order. We can only pray that life does continue to a new order until we see a time where Kipp’s dad and I will cut grass in true peace. Until then we show the resolve and strength God gives His people because we hope for a better tomorrow.
#Kippstrong47
