Sometimes, life just punches you in the gut. On Sunday afternoon I did my regular scan of my news sources and saw a small headline "Avalanche leaves 3 dead" or something along those lines. Normally, I probably would have clicked on it right away, but the internet wasn't working well and I was supposed to be working on a paper for class. I didn't read the article.
About a half-hour later my brother and his wife walk into the room frantic to get on the internet. They had just learned that a friend was one of those three. He was a friend who had helped my brother survive what also could have been a tragic ski accident. I didn't know the friend, though I had heard his name often.
Just the night prior my brother was retelling the story to a group of us of how he and Chris and another friend went out on a powder day to film some shots off trail. My brother ended up hitting a tree and breaking his femur. But Chris had a radio to call for ski patrol. Help came soon enough to get my brother out of the situation and get the medical attention he needed to live.
I didn't lose a friend on Sunday, but witnessing my brother wrestle with shock and grief, it sent me into deep thoughts of life and death and the risks we take in life and the unpredictablity of it all. Chris died doing something risky--skiing in the backcountry where there was considerable risk of an avalanche. But he also died doing something he loved.
Do we hold back on risk because of the unpredictability and fragility of life? After all my thinking, I came to the conclusion that no, risk is a part of life. Life is a gift, and while we don't need to live with reckless abandon, risk is necessary to enjoy the gift. If we live out of fear of death or live playing it safe everytime (in relationships, in our jobs, in our faith, in our hobbies) or live trying to control our surroundings, it's hard to enjoy life.
The more I study the story of God in the Bible, the more I realize how much risk God took on when he made creation and the risk and grief he took on to save us. He created people that he chose not to control and would create havoc as documented by much of the Old Testament. He also chose to send Jesus to earth, full on knowing the risk, and the necessity of death, to save us. And the risk that even with Jesus' death and resurrection, still not everyone would believe and be saved. But he took the risk anyway to create us, to be in community with us, to give us life.
Life is risky. Life is unpredictable. Sometimes we take risks and are better for it. And sometimes risk ends in sorrow and grief. But in it all there is a God who knows risk intimately, who is incredibly generous with life and ultimately conquered the riskiness of life with overcoming death.
(As a side note, I couldn't quite figure out how to tie this into my post about risk, but my brother posted some good thoughts on grief, and what grief means.)
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