I pulled Eugenia Price’s book, Getting
Through the Night, from my book shelf and opened its cover―page
after dog-eared page of this book is covered with ink underlines. Well loved
and well used. I reflected on the timing of this book being brought to mind given current events.
Yesterday, I had the privilege of attending the Georgia Writer’s Hall
of Fame, where four writers were inducted into the prestigious group, one of them
posthumously―a favorite of mine―Eugenia Price.
On one of two shelves in my bookcase dedicated to those writers who
have especially inspired me, her books occupy almost a third of a shelf.
Many
in Georgia know her for her historical fiction, the St. Simons Trilogy, the
Georgia Trilogy, and the Savannah Quartet.
But I have always loved her nonfiction, excited to find vintage signed
copies. Yesterday, I was honored to meet her niece.
As I opened Getting Through the Night, my heart was heavy thinking about the tragedy in Texas where
folks gathered in a small country church on Sunday morning to worship. As they perhaps leafed through a hymnal, read their Bible, or were
in prayer, the heart of evil entered their sacred space.
Price begins her book on grief with that familiar scripture from Psalm
30:5, “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
When we see these horrific images from Texas and see even veteran newscasters
struggle to keep their composure, we wonder how anyone could ever get to joy. How
would all these grieving people, a whole town of them, a whole state of them,
and well, maybe even a whole country of them get through the night―a
night that might seem to have no end?
Price writes, “God does promise that your night of weeping can end. He
does not promise that you will be unscarred as though you had never loved; he
does not promise that you will ever stop missing or even hurting.”
But, she challenges us with this thought, “Because of his dreams and
plans for us, we can be whole again.”
Whole seems elusive in a situation like this, but we take
comfort that it is God’s longing for us. He has not given up on our healing
and consolation. He has not abandoned us to the evil.
Of course, the ever present why it all happened is with us.
Price, too, loved the writings of C.S. Lewis and wrote, ”We, in our
agony, struggle to pull God down to where we are and force Him to explain that
which cannot be explained. C.S. Lewis wrote: ‘Can a mortal ask questions which
God finds unanswerable? . . . All nonsense questions are unanswerable. How many
hours are there in a mile? Is yellow square or round? Probably half the
questions we ask―half our theological and metaphysical problems―are
like that.’”
The why of it all probably falls into categories like these,
unanswerable this side of heaven.
It is true the night may drag on, but one distant day, there will be
joy because God has promised it. In the mean time, we stand with our friends in
Texas. Grieving, praying, and crying with you.