12 April 2013

Here (5 minute friday)


Joining with the community that is Five Minute Friday with the lovely Lisa Jo Baker. We like to write, not for comments or traffic or anyone else’s agenda. But for pure love of the written word. For joy at the sound of syllables, sentences and paragraphs all strung together by the voice of the speaker.

Five minutes on HERE


In memory of
Florence Lucas
the beloved child of Josiah and Esther Lucas
born November 4th 1869
died October 31st 1871
The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord


You are a name in the list of thousands in our family tree. You died on All Hallows’ Eve just short of your second birthday. Those words from Job 1:21 inscribed on your stone. Rock sheltered under the branches of the ancient tree.

Before pressing the camera shutter, my prayer whispered to friends who had recently lost their own children before-the-natural-order-of-things.

God–shaped hole that was left in your parents heart. Your story is unknown save that your father was the village rat catcher.

God, He knows your story.

He knows your parents’ story and their hearts too.

We all stand here with God-shaped holes in our lives. We can choose to look at them, see them and ask for your love to come and fill the aching spaces. Or we can bury them deep and place a heavy headstone on top of them allowing the soil to nurse the hurts and fertilise the wounds.

Yes the loss of a child leaves a particularly painful and unique God-shaped hole.

Yet still we all have holes.

When we are before You, You can reveal them to us if we will see.

And if we allow it You will write those love messages in the spaces between the words of our story.



8 comments:

  1. Jo this was so moving (and it takes a lot to stir my emotions!!). I have no words!

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  2. Oh how achingly beautiful.
    What a lovely tribute to a life cut far too short.

    Thank you -- this was so powerful.

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  3. Oh, this is beautiful. Poignant and powerful. '... love messages in the spaces between the words of our story.' Just lovely.
    Thank you.

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  4. Thanks Ruth, Meredith, Helen & Denise for stopping by & commenting.
    Graveyard photography is one weird hobby but I was happy beyond belief when I realised this one was part of our family tree! And I was living out Job 1:21 at the time (different circumstances). God just knows

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  5. Very beautiful thoughts. I feel that way sometimes in graveyards, too. (I'm into genealogy.) Even when a couple of hundred years have gone by, I still feel the parents' pain when I see the stone of a child. Then I remember, they've long since re-united.

    Laura Hedgecock
    http://www.TreasureChestofMemories.com
    http://www.Twitter.com/LauraLHedgecock

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    1. Hey thanks Laura reading & taking the time to comment. You're right that we don't have to have a connection to feel the pain. This was such a lovely memorial to the child.
      Have fun with genealogy (I'm into that too)
      Jo

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  6. Beautiful and heartbreaking. Wow. There are no words.

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