A devotion by Debbie Jorgens, Director of Outreach Ministries

I can’t stop thinking of my beloved friend, Jessica. Late last week, I learned that she has been diagnosed with a brain tumor. As brain tumors go, Jess told me, it is a “good” type to have. But it is in a “very bad” place. She needs surgery, and because it is too risky to try to remove the tumor altogether, the surgery will be followed by radiation. As if this news wasn’t difficult enough for her to receive, Jess has been told that the surgery (which her doctor wanted to do as soon as possible) will be postponed indefinitely because of the Coronavirus. 

A few days ago, Jessica shared this beautiful story on her Facebook page: 

When he was 40, the renowned Bohemian novelist and short story writer, Franz Kafka (1883-1924), was strolling through Steglitz Park in Berlin, when he chanced upon a young girl crying her eyes out because she had lost her favorite doll. She and Kafka looked for the doll without success. Kafka told her to meet him there the next day and they would look again.

The next day, when they still had not found the doll, Kafka gave the girl a letter “written” by the doll that said, “Please do not cry. I have gone on a trip to see the world. I’m going to write to you about my adventures.” 

Thus began a story that continued to the end of Kafka’s life. When he and the girl would meet, Kafka read aloud his carefully composed letters of adventures and conversations about the beloved doll, which the girl found enchanting. Finally, Kafka read her a letter of the story that brought the doll back to Berlin, and he then gave her a doll he had purchased. “This does not look at all like my doll,” she said. Kafka handed her another letter that explained, “My trips, they have changed me.” The girl hugged the new doll and took it home with her. A year later, Kafka died.

Many years later, the now grown-up girl found a letter tucked into an unnoticed crevice in the doll. The tiny letter, signed by Kafka, said, “Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.”

I know my friend, Jessica. She is a fighter. She is determined. She is an optimist. With that said, I’m pretty sure Jess is trying to prepare her family and friends for the possibility that she may not survive this. But she is reminding us that death never has the last word. Even if we lose her love as we currently know it, her love will return to us in a different way.  

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus foretells his death on three different occasions (8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34). The disciples fail to understand, even though in each account, Jesus is brutally honest about what is to take place. He tells the disciples that he will undergo great suffering. He will be rejected, betrayed, mocked, spit upon, and beaten. He will be killed. But Jesus says something else that changes everything: he will rise again. 

During this holiest week of the Church year, as we follow Jesus on the difficult journey that will lead to his unspeakable suffering and death, we have an advantage over the disciples: we understand that on the other side of Good Friday is the empty tomb. Love will return. Love always returns.