A few years ago Barbara & i visited missionary friends who work with HIV/AIDS kids in Romania. Upon visiting one hospital i snapped the above picture in which you see the children's playground which looks directly at the hospital morgue (Red Arrow).
Kids play on the swings and at times see trolleys with covered up bodies of other kids, whom they knew, being taken to the morgue. A constant reminder of the seriousness of their illness! (On my part, i think whoever designed this layout needs a few slaps to the head!)
I've been thinking about this over the past couple of days and actually think that this serves as an illustration of how we play beside death. The missionaries told us that the kids in the hospital hate the playground being so close to the morgue, and often avoid going to it, just in case!
But we don't even see it, or at least we ignore it in our own lives. We will get eighty years here (if we're lucky), and we choose to spend it primarily on entertainment. Playing with sex, relationships, even Christianity or church, wasting away our time with games and various other things. We even use death and the sins that Jesus died for as a means for entertainment in our films, television & computer games etc.
In all of this we have hardened our hearts, closed our eyes & stuck our head in the playground sandpit to avoid the reality of death. We waste our lives on trivial things and forget that one day our lifeless body will be taken on a trolley to a morgue.
But for now; we play away, ignoring death at our side.
Kids play on the swings and at times see trolleys with covered up bodies of other kids, whom they knew, being taken to the morgue. A constant reminder of the seriousness of their illness! (On my part, i think whoever designed this layout needs a few slaps to the head!)
I've been thinking about this over the past couple of days and actually think that this serves as an illustration of how we play beside death. The missionaries told us that the kids in the hospital hate the playground being so close to the morgue, and often avoid going to it, just in case!
But we don't even see it, or at least we ignore it in our own lives. We will get eighty years here (if we're lucky), and we choose to spend it primarily on entertainment. Playing with sex, relationships, even Christianity or church, wasting away our time with games and various other things. We even use death and the sins that Jesus died for as a means for entertainment in our films, television & computer games etc.
In all of this we have hardened our hearts, closed our eyes & stuck our head in the playground sandpit to avoid the reality of death. We waste our lives on trivial things and forget that one day our lifeless body will be taken on a trolley to a morgue.
But for now; we play away, ignoring death at our side.
