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TV Snapshot: Trust

Blue Bloods "The Job, CBS
In the Blue Bloods episode “The Job,” Henry Reagan (Len Cariou) listens to his son Frank (Tom Selleck) struggle with survivor’s guilt and the heartache at the impending death of a friend who was with him at Ground Zero on 9/11. Then he gently tells him: 
Son, I don’t know why Chief McKenna got sick from the air down there and you didn’t. Just like I don’t know why He took Mary and Joe from us too soon. But I see God’s light in this family every day, and though I may not understand it, I trust in his plan for us all.


Every once in a while, there is some rather direct God-talk in the open spaces of television--and you don't get much more direct than this. Henry Reagan (Cariou) is far from a perfect man, but one of the things I've appreciated about Blue Bloods is the vein of faith that runs through it and the Reagan family, especially the older Reagan men, Henry and his son Frank (Selleck). God isn't just a thought or idea to them, but a genuine part of their worldview. Henry's words remind Frank that there is something more and greater than the questions that can't be answered and things we'll never understand on this side of death. I especially appreciate how the hope we find in struggling with that kind of darkness comes in the light we see in God's touch and work in the lives of those around us in spite of the suffering--and how we are so often reminded of and encouraged by that hope through the words and touch of those who walk beside us.