Welcome to the Back of the Flock, where we are slowed down by late-season colds and early-season allergies, spirit days inexplicably scheduled for the last weeks of school, and the toddler who is really into wearing her pants backwards.
While I normally would have a Snacks post for you this week, I’ve been holding the following essay in like a sneeze (as this Instagram post so poetically put it), and I wanted to share it with you. It explores a mother’s experience in Gaza, some stories that Jesus told, and a parable I wrote to help us see the maternal love of a God at work among the body bags.
The image is seared in my brain:
A mother kneels in the dust next to a body bag. She turns to her child within, pressing her cheek against a stiffened face, while her right hand softly pleads, slowly stroking up and down her child’s body. She is moved only by instinct as the grief crashes over her — rubbing his back the way only she knows how, leaning close to whisper It’s okay, I’m here, an echo of the aching nights she spent bending towards him when he cried in the night.1
He is gone into the night forever now, and she is stuck in the searing light of day.
She, along with hundreds of other mothers, had searched for her child amidst the rubble of another destroyed hospital where thousands had taken refuge. The mothers move among hundreds of bodies, and as one article reported, “They (look) for their children, moving from body to body, inspecting each one with the greatest detail.”2
For this one, perhaps, she recognized the dark swirl of hair on the top of his head, the one the midwives had swooned over the moment he was born, proclaiming that she held a galaxy within her arms. For another, it was the fingernails always chewed to the nub, no matter what they tried. For others, maybe it was the space where he’d just lost his first tooth or the way her dark lashes rested over cheekbones that looked just like her grandmother’s. For some, it was only the remnant of the red tennis shoes he loved or a small scrap of the pale pink hijab she’d just picked out from the market.
Surrounded by the stench of death and decay, the mothers moved, body to body, to find their own, the details of each child chiseled into their memory even as their fingernails clawed their grief into the yellow dirt when they fell to the ground in stinging recognition.
When my babies were born, I studied them each like long-lost treasure. There in the hospital bed, I traced each finger, front and back, and traversed every line of their palms. I memorized the currents of their hair and the rhythm of their exhales as I counted and recounted every rib. I outlined their vertebrae and took note of the direction each toe wanted to grow. I tallied every freckle and mole, pored over the soft opal of their full bellies, breathed in their scent and shape, and learned it all by heart.
From day one, I would have known them anywhere.
Would you believe it if I told you that God has numbered and named each one of the septillion stars in the universe?3 And that this same God was there in the dark of your mother’s womb, knitting you together with the most complex patterns, weaving stardust into your sinews, singing your true name over you, and counting each and every hair on your head?4 The God of Greatest Detail, who memorizes our very essence just as Mary treasured every inch and ounce of her boy-child in her heart, a God who is familiar with our words before we even begin to think them…
…and a God who, again and again, finds us when we are lost. In Luke 15, Jesus tries to explain the heart of God to the teachers and keepers of the law. He tells them a triplicate of stories — a shepherd rejoicing over the lost sheep that he has searched far and wide for and finally found, a woman frantically tearing apart her house over a lost coin and inviting her neighbors over to celebrate when she finds it, and last, a father sprinting down the driveway to embrace his long-lost son, the one he recognized immediately while his son was still a long way down the road.
It is this God that I can see stooping among the body bags,
a parable for our times —
The kingdom of God is like a mother who is trapped between bombs above and terror below. She hid her child within the thick walls of a hospital to try to keep him safe. One day, while she was out searching for animal feed and roadside weeds to keep her family from starving, the soldiers came. They came with their weapons and cut down hundreds of people hiding in every corner. The ground shook, the buildings crumbled, and when she was finally able to return, her son was lost, hidden among hundreds of body bags. From body to body, she moved, stooping to inspect each one with great detail. The mother searched tirelessly among the dead, until at last, her hand felt the truth of him through the canvas before her eyes could even see. But there was no mistaking it; she had found him. There, she knelt, scooping the child into her arms and rocking him like she always had, rubbing his back and bathing his body with her tears, for she would know him anywhere.
God, with a mother’s love, is tenacious and will stop at nothing to find us.
God, with a mother’s love, seeks out what is lost amidst the sting of death.
God, with a mother’s love, has intimately numbered each hair on our heads.
God, with a mother’s love, would know us anywhere.
Postscript: If my therapist has taught me anything, it’s that two things can be true. I can weep and rail over the devastation happening in Gaza, AND I can want safety and protection for Israelis and everyone of Jewish descent.
Video of a grieving mother — Content Warning
From the Middle East Eye
Gosh, that image. It made me think of how God grieves lost lives and violence too 😢
Heartwrenching and beautiful at the same time. I love the ways you see God through these images and metaphors...such important work.