What a strange summer morning when my friend Mitchell fell
off the roof of Calvary Community Church… the year was 1978 and it was a time
when volunteers could work on roofs without safety harnesses.
My father[1]
was the pastor who transitioned this congregation from a much smaller building
with fifty people in 1974 to a group that would cram more than five hundred
people at its peak into this modern new church building. Many in the
congregation were involved in the construction including a handful of us
sixteen year olds eager to try our hands at man’s work.
The sloped roof above the sanctuary had boards being laid
over the beams. As each was placed, it was our job to nail it in place by hand.
On a morning that I was not feeling well, my friends went to work. As Mitch
laboured to loosen a crooked nail, he lost his balance and plummeted to the
concrete twenty feet below. If I had been there that morning, I would have
witnessed it. Some others I know did.
As his head cracked against the ground, he was immediately
unconscious. He remained in a coma for a week until he passed.
Mitchell Mireault was sixteen years old. He was one of the
guys I was close to. We spent lots of time together doing what young guys in
youth groups do—eating McDonald’s and pizza, flirting with girls and sneaking
out late at night to wander around the city.
Mitch was a good kid and he loved Jesus. He was missed
greatly. A young man in his prime who lived too short of a life…
1978 was our year without angels. None were there that day
to keep him from falling. The prayers of faith did not resurrect my friend
lying brain dead at Hotel Dieu Hospital. The prayer vigils did not keep him
alive. No miracles for us that week…
What do you do with yourself when the hard rain falls? Tragedy
has ways of opening up new kinds of questions. Hearts break and crumble under
the pressure of great loss. Some will never find ways to live beyond their
grief. At funerals for the young, we like to say that God needed them up there,
or only the good die young. Is that really true or is it what we tell ourselves
to cope with the unimaginable?
Others feel that tragedies happen to punish us for our
sinfulness. Do you remember some people saying that Hurricane Katrina destroyed
New Orleans because of their wicked ways? There is a certain, fearful looking
for judgment that people resort to when they cannot explain why something terrible
happens.
Somewhere in the theology of insurance companies, they have
determined that natural disasters are acts of God. In those cases, you may not
be able to make a claim; check with your agent to see if you are insured
against damages ‘caused by God’.
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