FRIDAY FORUM: Contrast
Destruction. Beauty. Loss. Love. Words and emotions rarely put together in the same sentence. At disasters large and small though, they are often all present in an awkward contrast that can be hard to rationalize. But I’ve come to believe these absurd contrasts are an important part of the grieving process, recovery, and the ultimate metaphor of life.
The lead photo was taken this week in a small Appalachian community decimated by Helene. A volunteer from Florida who happened to be a barber gives a haircut by headlamp to a volunteer from South Carolina, at dusk, along the beautiful river that became so ugly a month before. It was a pleasant scene of man’s humanity to man in the face of such brokenness.
The mangled remains of a vehicle swept away by Helene’s wrath rest in a still valley, autumn leaves illuminated by evening light. It simply doesn’t make sense, and yet the tension is there.
Following Katrina, I spent weeks searching for something, anything, not impacted by the storm. It struck me one day in rural Mississippi that all I had to do was look up.
We live in the tension of the already and the not yet. The tomb is empty, yet the brokenness of the world remains. Love will win, however, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
The lead photo was taken this week in a small Appalachian community decimated by Helene. A volunteer from Florida who happened to be a barber gives a haircut by headlamp to a volunteer from South Carolina, at dusk, along the beautiful river that became so ugly a month before. It was a pleasant scene of man’s humanity to man in the face of such brokenness.
The mangled remains of a vehicle swept away by Helene’s wrath rest in a still valley, autumn leaves illuminated by evening light. It simply doesn’t make sense, and yet the tension is there.
Following Katrina, I spent weeks searching for something, anything, not impacted by the storm. It struck me one day in rural Mississippi that all I had to do was look up.
We live in the tension of the already and the not yet. The tomb is empty, yet the brokenness of the world remains. Love will win, however, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.
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