Out of the Bitterness of Death Comes a Certain Sweetness (a riddle)

Judges 14:14 (King James Version)
14And he said unto them, Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness. And they could not in three days expound the riddle.

In the story of Sampson we are given an anecdote about a time that the great Hebrew strongman tore apart a Lion with his bare hands. After returning to the scene of the struggle he found a beehive inside the carcass. He reached in and pulled out a handful of honey that he ate with great satisfaction.
On his return to town he challenged his adversaries to solve a riddle he devised from the experience he just had.

Unfortunately his lover betrayed the secret and told his enemies the answer and so Sampson had to make good on the bet.

Of course he, being the impetuous, hot tempered boy he was, set about tying the tails of foxes together, setting them on fire and letting them loose to burn all the Philistine's crops.
PETA would not likely make Sampson a poster boy for their cause in a million years.

Anyway I have had an experience like this recently.

I was reading about a young pastor and his wife from Saskatchewan who suffered a great tragedy over the past weekend.
Shantelle the Pastor's wife had been battling cancer and it had appeared that she had a remarkable (dare we say miraculous recovery) but over the weekend she suffered a brain aneurysm and died suddenly.
It is one of those things that make you wonder what kind of joke life really is.

But when I went to Shantelle's blog I discovered that on the Thanksgiving weekend (Oct. 9 in Canada) she had posted a piece that so moved my heart.

Her death is making many, many people look at her blog and grieve. But it is also showing those who look with insight, that here is a sweetness even in the belly of death. Perhaps you will see something beautiful in that deep, deep sorrowful place.

Please visit her blog and look over the videos that the bitter news of her death led me to discover.

http://prairierascal.spaces.live.com/blog/

Behold, Out of Bitter Death Comes Bitter Sweetness.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D52rJd9GX10

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXipk9yEtaE