Sometimes God Gets it Wrong

R.I.P. Kaiser Carlile

Once in a blue moon, and remember we had one just last week, something happens that makes me believe in God. And not in a good way.

A recent news story has me broken up and wondering why. Last Saturday an adorable 9-year-old boy who served as the batboy for a local baseball team in Kansas was hit in the head by a player who was warming up. Little Kaiser Carlile was running back to the dugout and got too close; the player's bat struck the helmet Kaiser wore for protection and he went down. Despite the helmet, the immediate attempts at resuscitation and the hospital trauma team giving it their all, the little boy died the next day.

This story hit a nerve and I spent half of yesterday sobbing over his death, thinking especially of the player who had swung the fatal bat and the boy's parents, each now in their own private hell. Kaiser's mom saw it happen, sitting in the stands and watching her son having the time of his life, surrounded by the team he had come to love and regard as an extended family. But then, the horror. The disbelief. The vigil at the hospital. The many, many prayers from hundreds of people that went unanswered. The final outcome, and now the funeral.

It is all too awful to be random. It makes me think that God does have a plan for each of us, and that he really did call Kaiser back for some special reason. Or else it was a mistake, like in the 1978 Warren Beatty-Julie Christie movie, "Heaven Can Wait," wherein a novice angel screws up and taps someone not yet scheduled for death. (Great movie, by the way.) The alternate truth, that Satan rules the world, is simply too hard to bear.