Reflective- Bundle of Joy

What does a dead heartbeat sound like? How about lungs with no air? How deflated and flat they must be. In Peace like a river, Reuben was born dead… there was no life in him. His father was clearly a firm believer in faith healing, he did not take “No” for an answer, he demanded that life be brought to his son and it was.  Amazing isn’t it? This birth signified so much more than an actual birth, it signifies how life can literally be brought back from the dead in any man, it means there is a start of new and pure life and it means that now is a time of resurrection.

When my mother was pregnant with me, there were several times where I should have been dead… and possibly my mother too. Her stress levels were constantly through the roof and it happened to be around that time when she was diagnosed with post-pardoned syndrome and chronic depression, her life was at the lowest point it had ever been, so low it was kissing death. When my mom was in labor with me, she was doing fine until her heart gave out and both of our blood pressure and heart rates dropped deathly low. The doctors rushed to get her heart rate back up in hope that mine would mimic hers and quicken it’s pace, my dad got on his knees and prayed with a humble heart and my mom instantly was given full life back to her. When I came out of my mother’s womb, I was smiling and my mom tells me till this day I was a blessing that literally saved her life. She felt the Holy Spirit in the room giving me to her as a gift to take away her troubled thoughts and burdens.

Even the first part of this book we are beginning to read strikes me as breathe taking, maybe we forget just how important it id to realize how important Faith is, let us not just rely on it to carry us from problem to problem, but let our Faith be the way that we are able to see during the entire journey

Problematizing- Our mercy

Look at what we have become, for this world has taken the word “Mercy” and turned it into some halftime show that we watch at the expense of others. Think back in your mind and remember a time when you saw a person in need, maybe it was a homeless person or even a friend in need of a ride home. I guarantee that one of the first thoughts was how it could ruin a time schedule or what you could get out of helping that person. What a twisted place we have learned to love, this world where we take Gods given mercy and use it for our own benefits. Life was a gift to us, not a right we have. The one thing that is polite to do with gifts is share them, what greater a gift can you share than the gift of helping to save a life?

In this book the father and son come across a man who had been struck by lightning at first, in which the boy shows compassion for and this could also signify his youth and innocence. The man who has come to terms with reality knows that there is nothing that they can do. Also, later on in the story, around page 65 in my version they come across this group of truckers, one man comes out and is about to use the bathroom in the woods and invites them over to his truck but the father takes immediate offense and somehow the boy gets involved and the father has to kill the guy in order to save his son. This part of the book defined the father in my eyes, the father says after it happened “It was my God sent mission to protect you”, which is ironic because earlier on in the book he was cursing God and asking why He wasn’t there.

Why has our society lost its innocence? Do we see no problem here? Maybe if we tried to revert back to a time where things were good and people actually had intense amounts of passion for one another, then we would be doing ok. We wouldn’t struggle to find love in the darkness.