Shaq and Kobe.

Shaq and Kobe played basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers from 1996 to 2004. They won three consecutive NBA championships in the years 2000, 2001 and 2002. That's hard to do. They were dominant on the basketball court. There was also always talk about the feud of power struggle between the two larger than life personalities that they projected into their world. Did they like each other? Did they hate each other? You know, the usual stuff.

Kobe is dead. He and his 13 year old daughter and 7 other people were killed last week in a helicopter crash outside of Los Angeles. Yanked into grief and disbelief. Quick. Unexpected. Reeling. And then we begin to process our hearts. I remember the morning in my junior year of high school that our school headmaster called all juniors to the cafeteria unusually early on a school morning. Our classmate Lee Jacobs had died of a bout with brain cancer. Lee and I were not particularly close in high school, but he had been my best friend and spend the night buddy in grade school. I remember sitting in the quiet with my friends that morning as we heard of his death the night before. And then we began to process our hearts. We might not call it that or know that's what we're doing, but it is what we're doing. I began to process my heart.

Shaq is a television personality these days for an NBA pre-game show. He and his colleagues had a special broadcast from the floor of the Lakers home basketball court days later where they remembered their friend Kobe and....processed their hearts in front of TV cameras. It's worth a look if you search for "Shaq reflects on Kobe Bryant's death". It's about 7 minutes long.

Here's why I'm writing about this. At one point later in the 7 minutes, Shaq begins to say again how he just can't believe this has happened. He has talked just before about some of the regrets that he is now facing about his relationship with Kobe and how distant they had become. And then he starts to talk about a number of former NBA stars that he idolized and looked up to when he was a young boy. He tells how always wanted to be like Julius Erving, Dr. J, and how his mom lives next door to him now in Orlando. He grew up hearing about the three most dominant Centers in basketball and he tells about how he's met all of them. He sees them and He talks to them from time to time. And now Kobe's gone. He can't talk to him again. There is a hard and tender moment when he says that he wishes that he could just say one more thing to Kobe. But he can't. He's gone. And he's processing his heart.

There are really powerful words in the first chapter of Peter's letter to the scattered, chosen sojourners. Speaking about our salvation in Jesus Christ he says, "In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials." I THINK THIS IS HUGE! God is telling us that joy and grief both belong. If you're struggling with hard things today and are grieving, you're not cast aside. No. You are welcomed to the Father today in your grief. Suffering grief. I believe this is all of us today. I'm not talking about Eeyore, "whoa is me". I'm talking about the reality that the new heaven and new earth has not arrived yet in the second coming of our Savior and we're still waiting for all things to be made new. And while we wait, there IS suffering. Unhealthy relating in relationships with friends and spouses and children. Sickness and disease. Eventually living life from the numbing of one sporting event to the next, one great meal to the next, one sexual high to the next.....runs out. It's not enough. That's what the book of Ecclesiastes tells us. And so God in His kindness is teaching us that we are not freaks if we are aware of both the joy of our salvation and the grieving of our souls in this fallen place all at once.

And then Peter says, very tenderly I believe, these words about his readers and Jesus. "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him." I want to just stay quiet here for a long time because I can't really say or write anything that can expound the humbling vastness of these words. This is us. Peter DID see Jesus, but he is now writing to his readers, INCLUDING US, who have never seen Jesus. And his tender declaration is this. You haven't gotten to see Him yet, but you still love Him. Because of Jesus and only because of Jesus, this IS love. It is love. You know if you love Him. You know.

Quiet.

I get Shaq. He has seen all these larger than life men that he grew up following and now he even works with them and hangs out with them. He can't do that anymore with Kobe. He'll learn about loving him without seeing him.

That's you and I and our big brother, Jesus today.

There's more.