"It's Love that wrote the play"

Life is tough.

Tonight and last night I've found myself sobbing over the sadness that I find all around me. Parents lose their babies. Marriages fall apart. Churches struggle--sometimes they hemorrhage or break apart altogether. Families grieve as loved ones suffer wasting disease. Young women pour out their lives on ground that can only yield them pain and despair. People are broken. Saints die.

My Uncle Don, my great uncle, is dying of cancer. He's my dad's mother's brother, my sweet Gran's only sibling, and... oh, God, is he a precious life. I can't even begin to do him justice. Does it help you understand if I tell you that he had 22 visitors today? Twenty-two people who love him came and saw him... in one day. And that won't stop, either. He's headed for the palliative care (hospice) wing of the hospital tonight and, boy, those nurses better get themselves ready for the crush, because Don Fry is in the house, and he comes well loved.

As I cry tonight, and think of the grief and the pain and the confusion that seem to be all around me, this song keeps playing in the back of my mind:

"It is Love who mixed the mortar

And it's Love who stacked these stones

And it's Love who made the stage here

Though it looks like we're alone

In this scene set in shadow

Like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us

But it's Love that wrote the play..."

-David Wilcox (no relation)

I know it's not Scripture, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend the whole lyric as a treatise on God's sovereignty. But it does bring me comfort tonight, because it reminds me Who is really in charge of this messed-up world, even when all appearances are to the contrary. Love--Christ--has been here. Love is at work. He is the unseen director. He wrote the story. He will reveal the ending, in His perfect time.

He loves Don Fry. He's waiting to welcome him Home with loving arms. He's waiting for me too. Death and evil and brokenness will not have the final word. It's Love that wrote this play.