Borrowed Breath

Death is wrong,
And its grip is strong,
Like a vice squeezing my heart,
Yet somehow tearing it apart.
And this deep, deep pain
Goes against the very grain
And fiber of our being,
We are wounded by death’s sting. 

Because of sin and the fall,
We all must wear death’s pall.
And we quickly find
We were not designed
To feel this separation and ache,
This ripping, this tearing, this break. 

I lost my brother and friend,
And I cannot even pretend
That it has not completely messed me up.
Death, no matter how you dress it up
Is wrong, so wrong,
And it drags us along. 

He was ripped from our lives,
I didn’t even get to say goodbye.

I raise my fist and voice to the sky
And ask the age-old question, “Why?”
Why did my brother have to die?
The heavens offer no thundering reply.
No response to comfort or console,
But deep in the very core of my soul,
I hear a still small voice,
A gentle whisper below the noise,
Ken is not dead. He lives on.
He is not dead. He is not gone.

Safe in the arms of the risen Christ.
Finally with the one who gave him life.

We are not designed to deal with such loss,
Even Jesus, as he hung on the cross
Cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why has this deep sorrow overtaken me?”
Yet as he breathed his last breath,
And as he slipped into death,
The world would be forever changed,
The order of things rearranged.

For three days later in the misty dawn,
The grave lies open like a cosmic yawn,
And the slain Lamb of God is not inside,
He is not dead. He is alive. 

O death, where is your sting?
Though your claws may clutch and cling,
Your grip is broken,
And the tomb is open.
O grave, where is your victory?
In Christ, we are your escapee.
Jesus is alive again,
And we are alive in Him.

So in the midst of this chaos and confusion,
Hope sees beyond death’s illusion,
Hope shines like a beacon
And defies sense and reason.
So I cling to hope
Like a life-rope,
Lest I drown in sorrow,
Pulled into the undertow
Of pain so deep it feels like it never go away.
So I hope in the God of hope in this disarray.

And someday soon, we will be reunited,
No longer apart, no longer divided,
Gone will be sorrow and tears and pain,
And all that was lost will be revealed as gain.