Deep Calls to Deep

A lament rises from the depths of my soul.

Just after mid-day, the NICU staff called me to come urgently. I ran. Dixie reached the infant just ahead of me. I didn't know the shrunken frame of the baby on the table, I was sure. And then....... Oh God, oh no! It can't be! Kervens was still warm, but he was not breathing, and he had no pulse. We tried to resucitate him. It was too late. Only just. But too late.

Why, Lord? Why! Our miracle baby, the one we pulled back from the clutches of death twice was lifeless in front of us. We had discharged him on Wednesday, fat and beautiful and healthy, with formula and bottles and diapers. Now, the whites of his eyes were blue and his eyes were dark and sunken. The skin covering his stomach and his thighs was wrinkled, and his mother couldn't explain any of it. As I heard how Kervens writhed in pain all night last night, I struggled to see the goodness of God. This just looked like cruelty from where I was standing.

Our God, the one with a plan for each life; a plan to prosper us and not to harm us. Our God , the God of mercy and love had has allowed Kervens life to be saved not once, but twice, only to end like this? Where is the hope in that?

I am not in the mood for plattitudes today. I don't really want to hear that Kervens is at peace, and that his suffering is over. I want justice for him in this world. And I I don't want God to promise to make something good out of this tragedy, I want him to stop any further tragedies from happening.

The answers to the whys, the bible instructs, are too high for me now. I will have to wait for eternity for those. God sees through the darkness that envelops us tonight but we don't.

'My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the roar of your waterfalls;
all your breakers and your waves
have gone over me.
By day the LORD commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me.'

(Psalm 42: 6-8).

We are always told to encourage one another in the hope that is in Jesus, but I think we need to be honest too, that the demands of faith, lived by blind sight, are tremendous. The cosolation in this, the only one I can find, lies in that deep calls to deep connection to a God that knows that this is very hard for us, who knows that it hurts, who feels it, and who cries a deluge of tears, roaring at the pain and the injutice of it all. Deep calls to deep.