After the Last Bullet

It's been a month since Ben died, and this could not have been more timely:

Screenshot from video journal by Tenth Avenue North. 

The crazy thing is, when I look back and feel the raw spot where Ben was torn away, I don't feel cheated of a miracle. A freak accident - a tiny calibre bullet that could have gone anywhere - a wound that might have been a simple shoulder shot. Would surviving that constitute a miracle? No - by ordinary means, Ben should have walked away with a sling on his right arm and a rough experience under his belt (which he would have taken great pleasure into turning into a classic Ben-reenactment). 

Instead, something unusual happened. That tiny bullet - fired from the chamber of a gun he knew how to handle - somehow found both lungs and a blood vessel. I won't call that a miracle itself - just unusual enough to be nothing short of the hand of God. Ben died, and all the efforts of skilled professionals could not tear him away from what came next - 

the miracle. 

In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, Ben did not sleep but was changed: life, righteousness, glory - the full-blown realization of a thousand songs and promises Ben himself confessed and sang over almost-eighteen years. Like Lazarus, Ben might have toiled here on earth for seven or seventy more years, and that would have been normal. A bad night at the hospital for my parents and a crazy story to tell - that was expected. Instead - 

- rise, take up your bed and walk - 

- she is not dead, only sleeping -

- roll away the stone - 

- glory. 

A miracle. 

For Ben, glory came in an instant. For us, we never got to pray that the miracle would not come - to learn to be even a little selfish about grasping after the earthly treasure that Ben's life here on earth was. There was only the shock - the sudden flash of a gun - and then surrender into the upside-down miracle of the death of a saint. 

No, throughout this month, I have not wondered where my miracle was. I have wondered that a miracle was necessary. I have looked at the ways my sin has been broken because of this sorrow and wondered that such a miracle was needed. I have marveled at the way my heart is turning - ever so slowly - to seek after treasures in heaven, and ached under the cost of the sign of Ben's death. 

This is not numb resignation. Ben's life in Christ was too precious to be truly lost, which means that losing it now even for a second comes with a pain that takes me by the throat and makes me a little afraid to answer my phone. I remember too clearly - with a fresh start of the old shock - Papa's voice coming over the line, thick with grief and pain. Two words: Ben's gone. But then three more, still thick, barely penetrating the shock: God is good. And I marvel at further miracles: at the faith of my mother and father, at the utter lack of grief or worry for Ben's sake even in my own faltering heart, at the outpouring of the Holy Spirit into the sermon our pastor preached to his reeling, teary-eyed congregation a mere day and a half later, at how my father spoke truth in that moment and how Ben's goneness and God's goodness can be so thoroughly lacking in contradiction in spite of the pain. 

When we pray for miracles, they will come, but we must not expect simple tricks to undo potential or actual hazards in life. Our God is no cheap magician, a timely dispenser of bulletproof vests. His own Son came vulnerable to death and able to enter the grave. But dawn came on that third day - he is not here; he is risen - and for death, it was wrath, ruin, and a red sunrise.