Mortality

Saturday evening one of my workout partners had some friends over to watch the Mayweather-Hatton boxing match. Despite my lack of interest in boxing, I attended to get to spend sometime with friends. The constant references to me as “Rev” or “Pastor” drew attention from the host’s non-gym friends. After going through the typical conversation “So you aren't the youth pastor, but the Senior Pastor? You like get up and preach on Sunday mornings?” One guy started to share his spiritual journey with me.
“My wife and I lost our twenty year old son three months ago. We stopped attending church and our Bible class after his death. We didn’t receive any contact from anyone in our Bible class or church until a month later when a one lady stopped by to tearfully share her apologizes for not stopping by sooner.” He went on to say, “My wife is more emotional than me, but we cannot imagine going back there with those people. That’s why we are looking for a new church.”
Suffering with a couple who lost their son brings us to a sense of our own mortality that many of us don’t want to get in the ring with. The mortality of our twenty year old son’s and daughter’s is something we don’t want to get face to face with. Many of us, like their tearful friend, just don’t know what to say. Words do little justice to their plight, but it seems this couple was not looking for words to make their world right. They knew their friends were sorry. They knew their friends had no words that would bring him back. It seems that they just wanted someone to be sorry with them, someone to suffer with them.