Riley

I'm sure most of you have heard by now, that our 3-year-old nephew, Riley, passed away last Tuesday. You may remember my earlier post about him. I want to thank everyone for their prayers and support - I can hardly believe the difference it has made. A link to the newspaper story can be found here and the obituary can be read here.

We spent pretty much every waking moment last week with Seth's family, moving from utter shock and disbelief on Tuesday into overwhelming grief on Wednesday. What has been most surprising to me has been how quickly the family was able to move into acceptance and a celebration of this little boy's life. Even as we mourned our loss, the house was still filled with sounds of joy and laughter as we remembered Riley.

Seeing the faith of Riley's parents has been inspirational to me - and their faith has brought strength, peace and grace to all those around them. Of course, there are still many moments of tears and sadness whenever the ache of his absence is felt, but I'm impressed with how well the family has been able to grab onto all the goodness of Riley's short life and the goodness that continues to come from it. I pray that we will continue to do so.

Now onto some of my philosophical ramblings....

The human reaction to death has always been a strong source of evidence to me that God exists and that we are meant to live with God eternally. Death is the one experience on earth that is universal - everyone faces it sooner or later. And yet, our reaction to death is always to question it - as though it shouldn't happen. I heard over and over that first night the phrase "It's not right." And that's true - it's not right. Fortunately, that's not the end of the story.

Some would say that humans came up with the concept of an eternal life after death to comfort ourselves when we are grieving the death of a loved one. I think the opposite is true: we grieve the death of a loved one because know deep down that we were not made to die. God did not create us to die; we brought death upon ourselves when we turned from God, who is the source of all life. That is why death feels so wrong: because it is.

That's what the first few chapters of Genesis are expressing. They're not meant to be a scientific or historical account of how God made the Earth; it's a story (much like the parables) written to reveal fundamental truths about God and our relationship with him. This Truth is not contained in the details of the story, rather in the message that they express. Father did a beautiful job of expressing these truths at the funeral mass; I'll try to do a little of the same. (Some of) the truths are these:

1. God created us in his image, meaning we were capable of love. In order to be capable of love, we must have the freedom to choose love or to reject it - otherwise we would just be robots.

2. We screwed up. We ate from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil." In other words, we tried to take it upon ourselves to decide what was good and what was bad rather than trusting God, the creator and source of all good.

3. The consequence of our actions was suffering and death - not part of the original plan, but again the only way to avoid it would have been to make us into robots incapable of choosing for ourselves.

4. God loves us enough, that he promised to fix it (or "fik it"as Riley would say) by sending a savior. And he did. God became man and took the consequence of our sin upon Himself so that we would not have to suffer it eternally. So while we still experience an earthly death, through the grace of Jesus, it becomes instead a new birth to the life we were created for.

I think I've taken enough of your time for today; so to close, here's a video of Riley reading with Elena. He was her closest cousin (just 11 months older) and they loved playing together. We love you and miss you very much, Riley. We look forward to seeing you again!

Riley Richard Sorensen May 18, 2006 - May 4, 2010