Grace in Death
Five years ago today we faced tragic death. Oh, how an instant can change everything. How one event can alter the future of many.
Just a normal day at our home in Uganda. And a ring of the phone just like we heard so often. It wasn’t a greeting or a message or an invitation. It was the panicked voice of a wife who just got word her husband, our friend, was in an accident. And he wasn’t alone. Together, with our teammate Adam, he had traveled to purchase coffee beans on a mountain just a few hours from our town. The truck never brought them back to us.
A Ugandan leader and an American missionary met Jesus together that night. This shared death binding our communities even stronger in our shared ministry.
And they would be grieved by many. Mourned by two countries. Remembered intimately by friends and family. Never to be forgotten.
And in this death I learned to trust.
To trust a church to bring us home to grieve and help us heal.
To trust a God who took me back to the place that was no longer safe to me.
To trust a team, who I needed more than ever.
To trust Ugandans, as our blended community clung tighter to each other…
Them holding us.
Us holding them.
To trust God’s promise that the things of this earth are fleeting.
To trust that after death God always resurrects. Always.
Even in tragedy there is grace. For where God is present, his grace can be experienced. And he is present in all things. So is grace.
Grace in life is easier to spot and often taken for granted. Grace in death is much harder to see, but when you find it you hold tight and let it comfort you, endure you, teach you, heal you. And you never forget it.
We must learn to see grace in death. For all of life is dying to be restored back to Life. And it happens through grace, Grace.
For Adam Langford. His death taught us a little bit more about grace.
