When I was growing up my family went to the Church of the Holy Communion in Norwood, New Jersey. It was a little church, built in the neo-Gothic style so beloved by Episcopalians. It had a cloister that connected the church with the parish house. Years later, when I had sabbaticals at Oxford and Cambridge, I felt right at home among the grand stone piles.
When I was in second grade a classmate of mine died in a sledding accident, and his family donated a memorial window to the church in his memory. That window helped shape both my faith and my theology.
Here is a piece I wrote about it for today for the United Church of Christ’s Still Speaking Daily Devotional:
“Lost and Found”
By Richard L. Floyd
“Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one who has been lost until he finds it? When he has found it he lays it upon his shoulders and rejoices.” – Luke 15:4,5
When I was in the second grade a boy in my Sunday school class named Kim was killed when he overshot the mark on his sled, went into the road, and was hit by a car. Nobody I knew had ever died before and his death left quite an impression on me. I remember my mother and father sitting me down and telling me the sad news.” Read more
When I Survey . . . 
Reading this story makes me wonder about the part not known. That of the driver of the vehicle. Was he or she a good person? Did they speed often or drive carelessly? We’re they late for something and rushing or distracted? In vehicle pedestrian accidents it’s commonly blamed on “the driver not having their vehicle in complete control”. But how do you control a small boy careening into the road possibly unseen until it is too late for reaction time and physics to prevent a horrible outcome? Answer is we humans really don’t have full control of our lives and our surroundings. Yes we can donate to causes, write letters to legislators, campaign actively for change. But when my first wife’s father, a policeman and careful driver, hit and killed a small child who had run into the road from between two parked cars at the last possible moment, there was no controlling a good outcome. He was a practicing Catholic, but his faith was not enough to quell the nightmares reliving those disastrous moments. The bottle and his liver finally brought him to his Good Shepard. There I’m sure he finally found rest and forgiveness he couldn’t find in life. So there are many things we cannot control ultimately, when we realize we never really are in control, then we begin to see the light hidden from us by our own feelings that we and we alone are masters of out fate. ( noting here that I am far from perfect myself in faith, but I still am on the journey so there is yet hope for further enlightenment)
Thanks for the nice comment Paul. You never told me this before. And, of course, we don’t know the other half of my story and never will.