This world stinks. All by itself, without us sinful people polluting it. The premise stinks. Then you add us.
This world stinks and that's why little babies are born, little babies who did nothing to anyone, they're born broken and torn. These babies fight beyond their strength, and their parents fall on their knees and pray to trade places with them, pray just that the world would only stink less and that there are a few more days when you could watch your baby live and breathe. They beg God.
But that's not the plan, not what's best. We parents are too easily satisfied. Leaving the baby, broken, in a world even more broken isn't what God wants for any of us.
C.S. Lewis puts it this way:
If we consider the unblushing promises of
reward and the staggering nature of the
rewards promised in the Gospels, it seem
that our Lord finds our desires not too
strong, but too more weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with
drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy
is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants
to go on making mud pies in a slum because he
cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a
holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
So what pleases me would have been that Preacher Shane's boy would have lived to fight another day. I am crying. I am upset and I am grieved. What would have pleased me is that he would have fought for his breaths, fought every night for his life against his own cells.
That didn't please God. He wanted Michael Z. to come home to him and be whole. And run and laugh and praise. God wanted it to start yesterday.
