When symbolism and reality clash: A meditation from my life. | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: When symbolism and reality clash: A meditation from my life. | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sean Harding
08/18/09
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My father disappeared in autumn.

My father was found dead in winter.

My father died in a car, abandoned on a lonely bush road.

There was a hose from the exhaust pipe to the front window.

My father had been in his car for forty eight days.

The car had long since stopped.

My father had died, by his own hands.

My father died in winter.

The echoes of that moment, his decision live long, and resound loudly in my life, in the life of my siblings, in the life of my mother, and in the lives of others he knew.

Winter is often juxtaposed with death, a symbolic picture to bring home a valid point in a story. This however was no story; this was where symbolism met reality.

This was death at its most brutal and unforeseen and at its darkest and most cruel.

There are moments when my father’s absence is a painful wound in my life, there are moments when I reflect on memories that make me smile. Most of the time I live my life without living in these memories, but there are moments, moments that hurt, that bring the pain back as fresh as it was that day all those years ago.

Winter is the symbolic image of death.

For me winter is the reality of death.

However, winter is something else, winter is the reality of hope, winter is the reality of assurance, and winter is the reality of my heavenly father’s love.

Romans eight puts it so well, you see nothing, nothing, nothing can separate me from the love of God, not the death of my father. His selfish desperate act for unknown reasons cannot, and will not prevent me from abandoning myself to the arms of God, to embrace the passion of the love, mercy and grace of Jesus Christ.

Winter will always have for me the bitter memories of death and the sense of someone abandoning me, but I do not look back, as Paul said in Philippians I put the past behind I look forward, to the day where I will be in Heaven forever.

Winter tells me that in this life we have pain, suffering and turmoil.

Winter also tells me in this life, we have an eternal hope as we trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus!

Winter tells me I have an eternal hope as I trust in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

I once heard someone say death screams loud, but it does not matter how loud death screams, because Jesus is screaming louder.

Grace, mercy, love, and even peace scream at us through the broken body of Christ, and through the empty tomb.

I have come through that dark winter, I have loved and lived and I have stood firm because I have Jesus, I have hope, I have love, I have peace.

Winter is that time where I have grieved in bitter sorrow, but winter is where I have learnt to trust in, to cling to, to rely on Jesus.

The Bible in Romans 5:20 says where sin abounds grace abounds even more, to paraphrase I say – in winter where death, grief and pain abound, in winter, the love, grace, mercy and peace of Christ abound even more.

It is then true that whatever dark winter, whether a symbolic winter or where pain and grief have clashed with symbolism to cause a reality which cannot be ignored, whatever that be, the love of Christ, the mercy of Christ, the grace of Christ, and the peace of Christ will always overwhelm it and you can find it in him as you trust in him, and rest in his arms of love.

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