It has been almost a decade since my father died after his helicopter crashed on descent.

I still feel flashes of pain when I am reminded of that pain.

Ordinary haunting is a longterm normal for we who grieve.

The death of one man changes the world.  

Evoking Jesus.

He took every crash, every act of misery and self-destruction.  Drained the cup of history to the dregs of genocide, exploitation, war, famine, epidemic, deadly contagion.

Hell to pay for us. The wrath of holy Love, the grief of God poured out. 

For us.

To atone for the transgressions of a single garden-variety human would be unwatchable, unlivable, unthinkable, unbearable– awful.

The ransom for all our billions is so beyond reckoning, we do not try.

But we should.  

We should at least reckon the cost and the pain, fear, horror and brutality it took to redeem our ordinary wrongs-gluttony, lust, prejudice, and greed.

We should; we shall.  

We will either be defined now by our debt to this Eternal Savior or we will be defined forever by the life we squandered at his great cost.