And dance for all the joy

I was at a coffee shop in Atlanta, on a Monday evening before the sun went down, going through the Atlanta sports section for a second time. I saw the inside-page story, short, a Macon man dead in a football game.

I’d just been through a few weeks, a month, that I’d prayed as hard and as much and as meaningfully as I ever had. They’d found another lump in my sister’s throat. It was probably cancer and they took it out that morning.

“Lord, please be with my sister,” I’d prayed. That and really nothing else.

That morning she had the surgery and the news came back as good as we could have hoped. That’s what my Dad said. Non-malignant.

My heart sang and she was in good spirits, happy that the scar on her neck was just a little longer than it was the first time they went in and took something out a few years back.
Doped up and in a hospital bed that evening, she was 22.

And I read that story and it broke my heart for his family. Al Lucas, dead at 26. Where were my prayers for him the last few weeks?

Is it true that for every rise there is a fall? Does balance in this world give cause for guilt?
A billion bad things happened Tuesday and likely a billion good.

Dear Lord, thy will be done. And let us pause for all the sorrow in this world, and dance for all the joy.