I wrote the following the day after the Lord took Caleb home. I pray my process might be used to aid yours, as those of others have been used to aid mine.
I wanted to find a way to express or even record the moment, but how do you write silence into words? Job’s friends did well with supportive silence and totally blew it when they attempted words. At his friend’s grave, Jesus exemplified quiet sorrow. That being said, let me risk a few words as I try to work out the silence I’ve been given.
I believe in a sovereign God who has ordained our story, beginning to end, causing it all to work together for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose, and this to his good pleasure and glory (Psalm 139:16; Romans 8:28-29). The story had been getting difficult for the Otts along with their family and friends as we received news of cancer in Lynne’s body. The news was devastating but observable purpose emerged as the family rejected despair for hope, division for unity, anger for love, fear for faith, loss for the victory that is ours in Christ, and this for the building of God’s kingdom as he shined through his people. It was in this context that I received the news that my nineteen-year-old cousin, Lynne’s son and support, Caleb, was killed in a car accident. I had trouble accepting the news as reality. The plot had become implausible, over-the-top, far-fetched. How could so gross a terror have slipped past the author’s edit, left to drown out the subtle and beautiful nuance of the developing story? Like Martha and Mary I felt that if the Lord were around our brother would not have died (John 11:21,32). I knew that he was around…yet Caleb did die.
Against such odds as those for which the world would settle, we have seen in our day God deliver Brett from extreme neonatal risk, Steve Baldwin from a rare and unresearched heart condition, Luke from an A.T.V. careening down a mountain, myself from a car accident, Luke from a car accident, Caleb from a motorcycle accident, and accident-prone Poppy from seemingly all of the above and then some. We have experienced the Lord’s mysterious goodness both in times of circumstantial need and abundance (Philippians 4:12). Yet accustomed as we were to God’s surprising ways both as author and character, this one caught us beyond surprise…we were in shock. If there was a glint of pretense that the storyline had become to us predictable, manageable, or at least coherent, such fantasy was hurled off a precipous in rural Pennsylvania during the twilight hours of Saturday, March 1, 2008.
Caleb’s youthful passing sets him mature and grown in the presence of our savior whom he now knows face to face (I Corinthians 13:12; Colossians 3:3-4; I John 3:2). Meanwhile we who are left behind quietly lower our heads as those who look in a mirror dimly to him whose ways are above our ways, whose thoughts are above our thoughts (I Corinthians 13:12; Isaiah 55:8-9). And so while Caleb matures we grow youthful, as children who realize they do not have it all figured out let alone under control, children for whom anything is possible in a broader sense than we had ever thought (Mark 10:27; Philippians 4:13). It seems the Lord does both kill and make alive, he both gives and takes away (I Samuel 2:6; Job 1:21).
Yet in so doing he is giving me (us, if this resonates with you too), among other things, perspective on my perspective. The rich young ruler was willing to follow after his adult pretense of knowledge and control…even as they led over the spiritual precipous, to his death (Mark 10). I say, let’s leave our illusions so hurled. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom as a child shall not enter it at all (Mark 10:15). Am I ready yet?
