Not because they were famous do we mourn, but because they were family. Because they were young. Because Kobe was a father. Because he died alongside his daughter, likely holding her tight.
No, we don’t mourn because they were famous. We mourn because we share their humanity. We mourn in the same way for our family, friends, neighbors, and strangers who share similar tragedies. We mourn because we share what was likely their hope: to enjoy life together. We mourn because we feel deep in our hearts a rising conviction: it’s not supposed to be this way.
Most of the world cries out in grief daily. To cry and to mourn are the universal expression of “something gone wrong”. Every nation, tribe, and tongue encounters, acknowledges, and pours out their grief in one way or another.
A select few refuse to grieve, out of the belief that the world is cold and we have only to accept it. They live resigned to that “determination”. But for the most of us, we mourn because things aren’t supposed to be this way. In other words, we feel this way because there was another way, because there’s still another way.
Love is only possible because we were created to never part. Yes, love would die for another, even an enemy. But why? That something or someone might not be lost.
It’s not the threat of death that compels us to love. It’s the hope of life. If not life for you, life for them.
Death is not forever. Love is forever, Paul said (1 Corinthians 13:8, 13). Death is not forever because love is. The love of God is forever.
God is love and God is eternal. Is it not the hope of life that Jesus came to give? Yes and no. It’s the life of love that Jesus came to give. In Him we find our hope for that life. God so loved the world that He gave His only Son.
The death of death has passed in the death of Christ. The life of life has come in the resurrection of Christ. Life forever, eternal. Eternal not as in quantity but as in quality. The abundant life of God. The kind of life found in a God of love who created the world in his goodness and humanity in his image. Christ has come to redeem the world, creation, humanity from sin and death. Redemption, freedom, the inheritance of a new life, is found in Him.
We mourn not because they’re famous. We mourn because it’s hard to escape the pull of tragedy. But it’s possible to not be lost in the orbit of that tragedy. For Jesus has and is making all things new. One feels the push and pull of that hope, a living hope, even in the face of death. For death has closed its eyes and bowed its head before Jesus.
We feel tragedy deeply and we hold on tight. Who knows if Kobe was holding his daughter tight, not out of fear of losing what he loved, but in the hope of receiving it again brand new. I believe so. So we can hold tight to what we love, not out of fear of losing it, but in the hope and knowledge of receiving it again.