Bridges and cruises

I just read this article on CNN.com about a guy with a crack cocaine addiction who got mad at his wife, and in his anger he threw his four young kids between the ages of four months and three years old off an 80-foot bridge. And I don’t really care whether you believe in God or have any ties to any sort of religion at all, but regardless of your beliefs and lifestyle, there is something inside you that knows, this is so terribly wrong. There is some universal truth that is written in everyone’s hearts from the moment that you’re born tells you that this isn’t how the world is supposed to be. I’m not mad at the guy. I am utterly heartbroken for him, and for his wife, and for his children, and for God most of all. Because I have a feeling that God sees things like this happen all the time, and I really don’t know how he keeps it together—in a way it is comforting because it proves to me that he is way more powerful and loving that I can imagine—but I think the feeling I had when I read that article is something similar to the feeling God has every time someone sins. Which is even more saddening to me, because the feeling I had (and still have) when I read the article is such a terrible thing to feel, and God sees sin so much more often than I read stories like this. If there is anything that we can agree on, it’s that this story is like sandpaper against our souls.

This is why I want to live the way Jesus taught. Not so I can be a good Christian, not so I can be called a good person, not so I feel good about following rules laid out by people that lived thousands of years ago—but because I don’t want to feel like this, because I don’t want my friends and family to ever feel like this, because I don’t want God to feel like this any more than he has to.

* * * * *

A couple of my friends that I got to see last night are getting married this summer, and I must tell you that a couple like them is one of the happiest things to see. They are very much in love, and compliment each other so well, and it’s not even something anyone could really be jealous of because it simply seems to belong that way. One of the few things that is more joyous than a couple like them, however, is a couple like them who just won a cruise. (I must admit that I am jealous of that.) Though it was a short night, joy seems to be contagious to a certain extent, and it was rejuvenating to share a small part of their happiness and excitement. The rest of the night was spent with a very close friend, and it was one of the times that you don’t really do anything, but enjoy it so much more than any sort of activity with someone who is not as close. It is these times that one can be 100% sure of things, and that is so very refreshing and warm and there aren’t really words for it, the best I can say is “good” in its purest and deepest form.

And I’m surrounded by these things, these happy things, and I want nothing to do with sadness or bitterness or anger or beginnings and ends. And I wonder where these moments in the angry father’s life disappeared to. I am so confused as to how some people’s lives are filled with joy, and other people’s lives seem to be such wrecks. And I’m not talking about the difference between people who know Jesus and people who don’t, because I know plenty of people who love Jesus and live much closer to his teachings than I do who have so many hard times and so many unfair circumstances. I am fairly certain that’s the difference between the father and my engaged friends, but regardless, it seems so wrong for people to endure such a perversion of what life is supposed to be. No one should have to live with that “terrible feeling” for long. I want so bad for this man to feel the kind of joy my friends have, I deserve it no more than he. And I understand (as much as I can) a deeper level of Jesus’ death on the cross every time I hear stories like the angry father’s. Because if the wife was like Jesus, she would take his murder charges. And that blows my mind, there truly are no words to describe that kind of love.

I’m surrounded by these happy things, and I want nothing to do with anything else. I just want this happiness for everyone. I have so many luxuries (or that is at least what they may be believed to be)—a car, a space heater to keep me warm at night, a bed to sleep on, a computer that I use every day even though I don’t need it, and how can you be bitter when you have luxuries like these?—and yet it is this happiness that I treasure most. Regardless of the material luxuries one may or may not have, regardless of the kind of life one may or may not have lived, I have to ask: doesn’t everyone deserve to experience that joy?