Eli B. Smucker, 30, of 9 S**** Rd., New Providence, died Monday, August 8, 2016, of injuries sustained in an industrial accident....... and attended the Old Order Amish Church..... Besides his parents, he is survived by eleven siblings... all of New Providence.....
Eli was our neighbor. I didn't know him personally. I knew his face, knew he trained horses, knew he was friendly. He was one of our landlord's older sons. As far as I knew, he hadn't joined the Amish church yet, and he was unmarried. His family must feel so horrible. But I didn't know him. There's no reason for me to feel grief for this person. But I cried on the way home from work, today. Cried, because his family probably is hurting so, yet accepting it as is their way, and cried, because people aren't supposed to die. He should have only broke some bones... but not died. People shouldn't die - accidents shouldn't happen.
And yet it did.
14 year old dies after being pulled from eastern Lancaster County pond.
David Beiler. That was his name. I may have known his parents. When I heard of this horrible accident on the radio, I recognized his parents' names. I think they may have come to the clinic where I worked as secretary, a few years ago. Fourteen. Fourteen. He was swimming with a friend. Why did this happen? I had to listen to my Amish coworkers, talking about how horribly this affected David Beiler's sister. How she wouldn't talk to anybody. And I wanted to stop working, wanted to cry, wanted to shake my fist at the sky and scream, Why all this pain??
There was an episode of Dr. Who that I watched recently where the Doctor was unable to follow his rule of not altering fixed points in time. I think that he couldn't stand to be forced to stand back and watch while more great and important individuals died. So he saved the three remaining people who were previously going to die. He knew they were going to die, he had seen it in the future. But he snapped, couldn't take it, and saved them. Even though he knew he shouldn't. I understand why he wasn't supposed to... It always made total sense to me. And yet I've felt the struggle he always had to go through. I know how the Doctor wanted to save everyone, and how he believed everyone was important. Comparatively, somehow in my struggles with understanding why God allows horrid stuff to happen, and lets people die, seeing the Doctor in action helps me to see it so clearly.
Maybe, just maybe, like the Doctor, God won't change fixed points in time, because something so terrible might happen if He did... Maybe, just maybe, God is standing there, invisible, but in agony, like the Doctor, because He knows He shouldn't do anything, even though He so badly wants to. And maybe, just maybe, He has saved so many people already, and we simply have no idea.
Maybe He says something like this, that the Doctor said; "I’m the Doctor. I’m a Time Lord. I’m from the planet Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous. I’m 903 years old, and I’m the man who’s gonna save your lives and all six billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?"
And maybe He is always on the move, always saving, always helping.
I can handle a God like that.
“Everybody knows that everybody dies. But not every day. Not today. Some days are special. Some days are so, so blessed. Some days, nobody dies at all. Now and then, every once in a very long while, every day in a million days, when the wind stands fair and the Doctor comes to call, everybody lives.”
— River Song
"Just this once, everybody lives!!"
— The Doctor
“We’re all stories, in the end. Just make it a good one..."
— The Doctor
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