David wrote a wonderful post and got me to thinking about something: It seems like the cruelest thing is that life goes on.

Two things occurred in our region just in the past weekend that have made me gape at the reality of that statement.

On Sunday morning, Pastor Bill passed away. He was young — very early 40′s — and the pastor at a small church in Northwood, North Dakota. That morning, the world stopped for his wife and family. And then that night a mile-wide tornado — and F4 — ripped through the town and all but destroyed it, stopping the world for the rest of the town.

A young man, a senior in a local high school, was killed in a motor vehicle accident. The vehicle was involved in a collision and was engulfed in flames. He died in a hospital in Fargo where he had been rushed. The world stopped for his friends and family and now his friends will be holding him up as his pallbearers.

Why doesn’t the world stop? Just think of how many people are experiencing something horrible, something that has made their world crash to a dead stop, at this moment.

The world does not stop. Time does not stop.

But you know, the only building that wasn’t touched in Northwood, that wasn’t ruined by the tornado, was Pastor Bill’s church. And that young man who died? He was on the way home from seeing his new-born daughter, born that very day.

This world keeps going, like that tornado. It chews us all up eventually; no one gets out unscathed. It keeps going, but it offers up, every once in a while, this little pause. God allows some kind of mercy in the middle of what seems like unbearable and unthinkable cruelty.

A church still standing.

A daughter with a name.