A tragedy for the local community recently occurred with the death of a 16-yr old student who was active at my wife's church.
Outgoing and devout, he did missionary work in other countries as well as among his high school classmates. My wife knew him and his youth minister father and it saddened her to tears.
Shortly after noon church service, without a drop of alcohol to "explain it", he drove over 100mph because he wanted to see if he could get the car airborne. He lost control, went into a ditch, flipped the car and hit a tree. The two passengers received only minor injuries.
I didn’t know him, but it irritated me that he could be so reckless. Does confidence in God overflow into areas of life it shouldn't? Popular and genuine among his peers (a combination in high school as rare as hothouse flowers above the Arctic Circle), he was much more courageous than me - and I'm not talking about driving habits - but perhaps, at age 16, you don't get courage without foolhardiness.
I can’t help but think it God-appointed that neither of the kids he was with were seriously hurt. His parents, bearing the nearly unbearable burden, at least don’t have to have the additional weight of their child being responsible for another parent's nightmare.
His memorial service was happy and enthusiastic, not sad. Which I didn't know what to make of. Given eternal life, a death is not the loss that it is to an unbeliever. But given the cult-like, 'put on a happy face at all times' aspect of this non-denominational church I had the proverbial 'mixed emotions'.
But perhaps that is prejuidice. Our previous Dominican friar, half-Irish and half-Italian, said that funerals that involved both sides were always strained because the Irish half were joyful and the Italian side grim.
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