What do we really have control over-really?

What do we really have control over-really?

That men may know from the rising to the setting of the sun. That there is no one besides Me. I am the Lord, and there is no other, The One forming light and creating darkness, Causing well-being and creating calamity; I am the Lord who does all these.   Isaiah 45:6-7 (NAS)

By Bobby R. Henry, Sr.

My daughter came to visit me today and she looked as if she were losing her best friend. Her face was absent of her normally welcoming smile and her expressions were displaced.

If you know my daughter and her battles, you would know immediately what my concerns were. I fought off as long as I could not to allow her to see me looking pass her outward image but look intently into her deep rooted mind-set.

We chatted briefly without meaning, until she began to tear up and started to cry.

Oh boy-what was going to explode from her soul I thought. I was bracing myself as well as I could. I thought if I did not stare into her eyes I could handle anything, but then she broke loose.

She began to tell me about her friend whom she was helping to care for during his rehabilitation and recuperation from recent surgery.

Her role in his care and treatment was to change bandages and if need be to remove, clean and replace the catheter.

Just then I thought about death. No matter how it comes it means , “absent from the body” and be present with the Lord.”

As a parent the thought of your child passing on to glory is an eye opening experience to reality.

I can’t say I know how Tracy and Sabrina(Trayvon Martin’s father and mother) feel but I do know that for a few moments I realized just how helpless we are in life and death situations.

I’ve spoken to several people since the verdict from the George Zimmerman faux of a trial. In my moments of sober judgment, I have come away believing that no matter what, Tracy and Sabrina could not have prevented what many of us consider to be such a horrifying, debilitating sequence to the end of such a precious life.

Yes it saddens me to think that the life worth of a Black child will be summed up in a civil case that will award the family a certain amount of money for the life and death of their baby boy.

In my fundamental thinking, I associate this with the earthly form of what our ancestors had to endure during the enslavement of our people-we were sold as chattel property by law.

In both situations money seems to be the conduit that forever links Black people’s worth to this country.

We seem to finance everybody’s pockets but our own; and most of the dollars are made within the judicial system off of us, not justice, but just us in the system.

Just as quickly as my mind flashed on Trayvon, it, with warp speed, refocused on my daughter’s deep remorseful state.

She began to tell me that she thought that she had caused her friend to have to go back into the hospital, and he was not doing so well.

I surmised that she had transposed herself into his situation and she was afraid.

As I listened to my daughter in-between her sobs and painful mourns, I was thinking how can I offer some reconciliation for her misery and guilt.

In my spirit came the Spirit asking me, “What do you really have control over-can you prevent death?”

That is what I asked my daughter, and that is what we focused on.

Who are we that we think that we are so great that we can prevent death?

     Yes there are a lot of coincidental inferring and a lot of what if questions to life and death, but the bottom line is, “And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.”  Matthew 28:18 (NASB)

1“Dear God when we are faced with death may we approach it as like if it was the most beautiful sunrise that we have ever seen.”                    — Bobby R. Henry, Sr.