This Incomplete One: Words Occasioned by the Death of a Young Person
When the sticks and stones of illness, accident, and suicide cut young lives short, it seems no words can soothe a parent's grief. But there have been preachers, Bush says, who were less clumsy, at least, at expressing the word of God at times when parents and the world asked in anguish, why? In this selection, Bush presents 15 Christian reflections on lives cut short. Columbia Theological Seminary president Laura Mendenhall's call to baptize a dying infant at Easter reminds her that death is a baptism into the hands of God. When William Sloan Coffin Jr.'s son was killed in an automobile accident, he found consolation in believing that the young man's death wasn't the will of God at all; rather, "God's heart was the first of all our hearts to break." Bush laments that the preachers of too many of these sermons are Presbyterian and that "too many are male, and all are white." What they lack because of those attributes seems more than balanced by the diversity of their personal perspectives.Donna ChavezCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved