Healing Strength: Loss

Accidents happen because we are all human. Accidents come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and flavors. As a matter of fact, I will bet you there are more ways to have an accident than drinks you can order from the Starbucks' barista. And you are talking to someone who has ordered a lot of lattes!
Two people may collide in the grocery store and their carts hit, causing one person's eggs to break. When two basketball players go up to the basket, one person to make the lay-up and the other person to block the shot, both players come down and one might be injured. When reaching for the salt shaker, a glass of iced tea may be knocked over into your plate at the dinner table. When we have "accidents," we are always taken off guard, and we may even be upset with the other person. Depending on the timing of the accident with other events in your life, or the significance of it, the result may be a deeper and more dangerous emotion: anger.
Forgiveness towards the man who hit Jim and Grandpa couldn't have been easy for Aunt Chris. She lost her husband because of this man who ran a stop sign and t-boned Jim's car on the driver's side. He wasn't drunk. He wasn't talking on a cell phone. He didn't hit a patch of ice, nor did his brakes fail. Perhaps something was blocking the stop sign and he couldn't see it. Perhaps he dozed off. Perhaps he just wasn't paying attention. Or perhaps he reached down to grab something that fell on the floor, or to change the radio station and he looked down for only a moment.
"Only a moment." I don't really know how long a "moment" really is, but all it takes is just a split second. But in that "moment," your life changes forever.
And perhaps someone else's life has been changed forever, too.
No matter how you slice and dice it, it was an accident.
Accidents happen.
Forgiveness is the key to moving on. Jesus teaches us to forgive. As Christians, we are filled with the Holy Spirit and, during certain times of crisis, we might need more of the Holy Spirit, and we just might need it more often, too.
Think about it in terms of M&Ms…when a bad situation comes into our lives, ladies, we go find the M&M bag. If bad emotions come up on us occasionally, like when “expectanting” death enters our lives and our elderly parent isn’t at the Sunday dinner table anymore, we just need to have that bag handy for nibbling on. But when that tragedy strikes, we need larger doses of the Holy Spirit and larger doses of M&Ms, and we need them more often.
M&Ms are band aids, though. The Holy Spirit isn’t. When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we are in “Christ forgiveness mode,” we are filled with love and understanding and we forgive.
Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of malicious behavior. Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another just as God through Christ has forgiven you.
(Ephesians 4:31-32)

The Apostle Paul wrote these beautiful words to the church in Ephesus in order to strengthen their belief in God. Paul was imprisoned at the time he wrote those words. And I'm not talking about prison as we have today. I'm talking about a prison 2,000 years ago. A prison cell that was in a cold, wet dungeon or cave. A prison cell that had no sunlight, and probably had rats running about. There was no running water, no bathroom, no shower. I don’t even want to think about the food he was probably given. It was a desolate place that has to be endured after being beaten. How many of you could have this kind of faith under such difficult of circumstances?
Step back and really think about that for a minute.
If your 8-year old spills her milk all over her dinner plate, and your nice tablecloth, and on your carpet, it may be pretty easy for you to forgive her and it may be relatively easy for you not to be angry after a short passage of time. But what if your spouse comes home day after day, and yells at you. You feel as though you can't do anything right. In the latter situation, it may be harder to control the anger that will eventually surface.
Now imagine this: what if your spouse was lying in a hospital bed with brain damage because of an accident in which he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time? How do you wrap your arms around that? How do you understand it? How do you ever accept it?