Kevin's Theogrimage

To one of the men who stood by us in our times of suffering. To a father figure who practiced biblical manhood and exemplified it in his life and family. At my sister’s looking-forward-to-marriage ceremony, he came to bid her congratulations. I saw him, I saw him there and had a conversation with him. Would my knowing that death was lurking round the corner have changed the topic at hand? Would I have paid more attention to the chatting that was coming from a place of life? Contrasting with the wedding photos, and baby photos on my social media applications, the morning message announcing the passing on of a father-figure, a man who my parents sought counsel from and who saw eye-to-eye with each other, even heart-to-heart was dumbfounding. Dumbfounding in a manner too familiar to me, yet still with its stinging freshness, was the news spread this morning. Far from the coolness of a cucumber, my heart was at odds empathizing with my friends, who we grew up with and who called...

Friend or Foe? It is often said that the experiences we go through give us a lens with which to view and interpret our reality in the world. In my case, especially after the death of my brother, I have been thinking more frequently about death and life and their mystery. In line with this, I was led to an essay by Esther Acolatse, professor of pastoral theology at Duke Divinity School. Her central idea is that  death strikes both as a familiar friend and a dreaded foe, hence creating ambivalent feelings in us . [1]   In her thinking through this ambivalence, she provides a framework for understanding this mystery of death and to anchor it on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  I have always thought of death, for a long time, to be both a natural process as well as a negative result of man's participation in his choice of separation from His creator God at the genesis of creation. The verse that Acolatse alludes in this thinking is Genesis 2:17 " but you mus...

My day-to-day in the past weeks has been  a series of emotional highs and lows. In this reflection I will focus on the lows : darkness, despair and despond. While reading a blog post from John Piper's Desiring God's website, the post  Worship in the Dark  drew me to the words in Psalm 88. In many ways, this psalm has brought to my heart and mind some of the emotional agony that the loss of my brother has resulted in. The lows of this emotional roller-coaster are different many times but based on the reaffirmed reality of life on earth: That our experiences here on earth will be colored by troubles. This is the same reminder that Jesus gives his disciples in John 16:33 prior to his taking up his greatest obstacle but our greatest pathway to a ransomed life, that is the Cross. The Agony of Loss based on Embodied Reality In such moments as have been the past weeks, these trials have been real. The agony of never seeing one whom you have more than been acquainted with...