How sad I was to read a few days ago of the discovery of the body of Tom Ballard on the slopes of Nanga Parbat, the tenth highest mountain in the world.  Once anointed the "King of the Alps" for his immense prowess on the peaks of that range, he had, with fellow climber Daniele Nardi, set out to climb Nanga Parbat by the most difficult route possible in the most arduous season possible:  winter.  Everyone had high hopes.

Alison Climbing

Tom at Four Years

     Ballard's death was particularly tragic because he was the son of British climber Alison Hargreaves, the first British woman to summit Mt. Everest and, a mere month or so later, the first British woman to climb K2, the second highest (and considerably more dangerous than Everest), in the world.  She perished in a storm as she was descending from the summit.  Tom was six years old.
     Now Tom is gone, too, his life snuffed out at the age of thirty (his mother was thirty-three when she died).  Oh, life!  We love it, we live it.  But we can never master it.  

Tom                                                Daniele

     We can only love God.