Life and Death and Life

Farley Mowatt and his new bride traveled through Europe a few years after World War II seeking memoria of battles and stories of a time recently past. Farley served with the Canadian Army in Italy and the war was fresh to overflowing in his mind as he visited the battlefield on which he nearly died. Another battle, hardly known outside France took much effort to discover. Local residents would not talk about it; the memories were too fresh and cut too deeply. The area sits high atop a plateau, protected on all sides by steep escarpments and reached, at the time, only by treacherous unpaved roads. The French Resistance exploited its natural defenses from which to launch vicious and nearly-successful raids on the Germans spread out on the plains below. Their tactics succeeded to the point that the Germans were forced to divert troops from Normandy Beach to quell the resisters. Finally, the Germans had enough. They mounted a full-scale assault on the fortress. In days of bloody battles, they finally defeated the partisans. Soldiers, resistance fighters and civilians alike were rounded up and slaughtered; a grim chapter in a grim war; one of a \n almost continuous grim saga which is the history of Europe. Mowatt and his wife found small cairns of rock at locations along the roads with names of those murdered; grim reminders of a time when a whole nation became a serial killer. As a child, riding in my parents' auto, we drove through lush green canyons of corn growing from the rich Iowa loam of central Iowa. Dotting the roadside were crosses; here one, there five. I was horrified to learn these crosses marked the site of an accident in which some was killed. In my childish mind I saw five crosses where our family met their untimely demise. The terminus of death, marked in both locations in memorium; one to accidental and senseless death and the other to inhumane slaughter of purposeful vengeance and bestial cold-hearted murder; death by coincidence of time and place, marked by a roadside memorial. Is death truly accidental, based on a coincidence of time and place and circumstance? Or, conversely, is death a timed event, no matter how apparently accidental, a planned event ass the narrator of Johnny's Got His Gun says, "Somewhere there is a factory manufacturing the shell with my number on it"? If death is unplanned, then we have every right to fear the next moment, the next car ride, the next landing, the serial killer roaming uncaught in the region. If death is a future calendar event, marked in red on His great timetable, we need have no fear; all is in His loving hands. He knows, He gathers into His fatherly arms each at her appointed time and manner. Some view God through this latter perspective with anger and dread; I think it is one more way in which He invests us with faith and trust in His benevolent love; a Mother rocking her babe in her arms, singing a simple tune with comforting words to her fretful infant. Knowing this, having confidence in this, we can cease our restless anxiety and relax into the momentary sleep that wakens into His glorious eternity. Since his days are determined, The number of his months is with You; And his limits You have set so that he cannot pass. Book of Job’s Sorrows Chapter 14 Verse 5 The LORD knows the days of the blameless, And their inheritance will be forever. LORD, make me to know my end And what is the extent of my days; Let me know how transient I am. Book of Psalms Chapter 37 Verse 18 and Chapter 39 Verse 4 " 10.20.12