Less than a week before Alice died, we drove around Fayette County just to absorb the beauty of the season: azaleas blazing,

wisteria cascading through the trees, dogwoods beginning to spread tentative petals. I knew, and she knew, that she was seeing springtime

here for the last time, and you could have convinced neither of us that heaven's would be more beautiful.

When I told my friend that it's different for everyone, I was thinking of a family whose teenaged son died in a car wreck years

ago. The mother was a long time coming to terms with her loss, but what seemed to work for her was that she believed it was God's will.

Similarly, came a letter last fall from a man who said he believed the loss of a loved one was "ordained by God." To which

everything in my being cries out, "No!"

My dictionary says "to ordain" means to decree, order, establish, enact, predetermine, predestine. The God I worship is too loving

to ordain cruelty upon anyone.

But the God I worship created a universe in which the rules are absolutely even across the board.

When airplane controls burn out, airplanes fall. When a man gets drunk and drives into a tree, or when an inexperienced

young person speeds, death and injuries happen.

When we eat the wrong foods and fail to exercise, our arteries clog up, and when arteries clog up in certain ways, sometimes

hearts or brains stop working. And when certain changes take place in cells, for reasons not yet clear to us, cancer happens.

No exceptions. For me to expect that God will suspend the laws of the universe on my behalf is nothing less than arrogant.

Certain events and certain choices have certain conequences. We don't always know the how and why.

All that we do know for certain is that God has promised to be there for us and that God suffers with us, even as we (in pale

comparison) suffer with our child when her favorite doll breaks. We may even know it's going to happen, given her carelessness with

her belongings, but we do not necessarily intervene.

We do, however, offer solace in her time of grief and assurance that eventually the pain will lessen and she'll come to a

clearer understanding of why these things happen.

No, it does not comfort grieving parents to be told their child's illness and death were "God's will." But it is a comfort to know

that God is there for us, grieving with us, consoling, loving, and full of grace.

In a perfect world -- in Eden -- there would be no cancer or arteriosclerosis or plane crashes or bad choices. This is not a

perfect world, yet Easter's message still is this: We have a loving Father who has not forsaken us and never will, even this side of Eden.

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