Mourning Glory - The New Character of Grief

THE NEW CHARACTER OF GRIEF

When Lorelle and I first wrote this grief devotional, Mourning Glory, the world of grief, as well as the world at large, seemed much smaller. We had not been through 9/11, the war in Iraq or Afghanistan the tsunami in Asia or Hurricane Katrina. Mourning was that small, black blob within us, the ashes in the fireplace, the personal despair, the internal hopelessness about our own lives. Indeed grief is always that, but now it has metamorphosed, mutated like bird flu to a dense, viscous, bloody-colored, smelly fog which overhangs the world with its impermeability to light and love. I am tempted to say that it has become a grief without comfort, a dark with only shapes and shadows, Plato’s phantoms and shadows on the wall, and sometimes an iniquitous night of both unrelieved terror and mourning.

For the family of a dead soldier; or an Afghan or Iraqi or their children slain by the forces of evil; for the people who have lost their homes, all their money and possessions in Katrina or Rita, the idea of a good, righteous and loving God must be nearly impossible to comprehend much less to embrace. One man rescued after Katrina talked about the loss of his wife, and probably his grief reflected and mirrored for us all, the enormity of tragedy and loss which has no recompense or seeming justice to it. His wife was holding onto him, and he didn’t have the strength to keep holding her. She knew this, and she told him in her last unselfish thoughts to take care of the children and grandchildren, and then she was swept away in a flood torrent of Hurricane Katrina. The man was crying in sorrow, so deep, that tears welled up in my eyes, and my question was, “Why, Lord, why?”

I don’t know the answer to this. To some extent I can understand and accept bits and pieces of all the explanations propounded to me. I have heard that we are in the last days, and I can buy that; I have heard that God’s judgment and righteousness is abroad in all the lands, and I can buy that; I have heard that mankind’s spiritually diseased condition must be addressed, and I can buy that; I have heard that God will not abridge man’s free will, whether suicidal or homicidal binge by individuals or nations, and I can buy that; I have heard that Satan is raging because his time is short, and that our Lord Jesus’ time is at hand, and I can certainly buy that. I can accept at least part of all these construals. What I cannot accept and never will is that death and destruction, a culture of hate, lovelessness and lawlessness are not only the Godly outcome but the ultimate spiritual purpose of our triune God. It flies in the face, like a bat out of hell, of every aspect, of every attribute, of every fiber of the being and character of my God, my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

We know that an all-powerful, ubiquitous God, a God who is the alpha and omega of the universe, who is the creator and creator of the destroyer did one of two things. He either orchestrated every disaster from 9/11 to Katrina, or he permitted the calamitous, catastrophic event to occur. Those are the only two choices as I see it. I am now on the true horns of a dilemma myself, my own choice between two equally indecent, almost obscene options. I can believe in a God who will, out of his anger and hurt, destroy me in the most putrid and horrifying way, or I can believe that these events are so dastardly and dreadful that they are simply happenstance, simply accidents of the universe, and there is no God. Or is there a third option?

Is there a way of seeing the world’s disasters which indeed begins to comprehend a God who is love and who wants to share his kingdom, heavenly and earthly, with his beloved, all of mankind? Is this possible, even vaguely, even through a glass darkly in such a world as exists today? Yes, I believe it is. If I look to God’s Holy Word, the Bible, and to the Garden of Eden, I see an idyllic existence where man walked and talked in complete and joyous intimacy with God, where our destiny with our king was sealed in an ideal of spiritual excellence, perfection and beauty with never a pin prick of pain to trouble our utopia. Ok, ok how long did this last, this ultimate perfect purpose God had for his kingdom? Well maybe two, three weeks tops, and then there’s the rest of the Bible. So the Garden of Eden was not a beginning, was not the party, maybe the invitation, but not the party, was not the story, was not the boring, idyllic, complacent life in the country, was not the beginning of any of our lives here on earth. It was the end. When Adam and Eve were ousted from Eden, that was the end, the living end, the dead end, the rest of the road around Eden barred with the usual signs,- “no entrance,” “forbidden,” “all mankind stay out forever or until further notice.”

So for 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the New we get life as we know it, in all its messy, nasty, sullied, blood-stained agonizing truth; that life is difficult and sometimes nigh to impossible; that Adam and Eve’s ejection from the Garden was not the end, was not the spiritual death, the swan song of mankind, it was the beginning, the beginning of a struggle so real and sometimes horrifying that it pales most so called realistic novels. A cursory review of the plot reveals blood and guts, sex and violence, death and devastation stories to rival any of a Clive Cussler or John Grisham page turner. We have murder, Cain and Abel; Flood, Noah and the Ark; cities wiped out, Sodom and Gomorrah; the killing of children and entire civil populations, Jericho, except for Rahab, and many other kingdoms; isolation and exile to the Wilderness and Babylon; Herod’s killing of two year olds when Jesus was that age; the oppressive occupation of Israel by the Romans; and the excruciating death of our Lord and Savior, Jesus.

So we are back to the question, “Why, Lord, why?” In one of the “God” movies when someone asked George Burns as God, why there was suffering, he answered, in effect, that he could never figure out how to create a back without a front. I take this to mean that there is no earthly beginning without an end, or an earthly end without a beginning, no transformation without pain, no sweet victory without defeat. So when there is an end, then there is a beginning. Can this starting over, this completely new beginning, this pushing westward to new frontiers forge, formulate, create, even invent new ways of defining mankind and our relationship to God? Can we actually become closer to God after our eviction from Eden? Can we be molded into people who not only survive but spiritually surmount, conquer and prevail whatever our earthly circumstances? So many Biblical examples exist. To list but a few, out of the dread wilderness journey a stuttering murderer and a wayward nation transformed into Moses, the leader and prophet, and a nation who taught us the meaning and depth of worship; from a young upstart in the wilderness and a jaded harlot of Jericho came Joshua, a seasoned general and man of God and Rahab, the alien whore transformed into woman of God, both of whom showed us how to occupy our promised land; out of the exile to Babylon came Daniel, the prophet, and Nehemiah, the leader returned from exile, who rebuilt the city of Jerusalem and restored the worship of God. Examples abound in every book of the Bible. The last and foremost illustration is, of course, our God, our Logos who became man, without whose atoning and excruciating death, the death of our precious Jesus, we, all of humanity, would have no hope at all of reconciliation with God, the Father.

I am not saying let us welcome death and destruction whether by man or natural disaster. I am not saying that we should not mourn. I would never ever say that I don’t hope, often, frankly, there could be a kinder, gentler way to live life. But the very hostile truth is that life is demanding and unsparing, at best, and often unbearable at worst. God may not test us beyond our limits, but we are certainly sometimes at the edge of the abyss hanging on by our fingernails. So what is the comfort for our mourning here in the Zion of our hearts?

Let me go from the macrocosmic to the microcosmic. I was a hopeless alcoholic and drug addict. I was also almost a devout atheist. I wrote the thoughts of one of my robot characters in a novel, in effect, that from the looks of things on earth if God existed, he was either a sadist, a psychotic, a gross underachiever or a comic with an evil and destructive sense of humor. Perhaps he does have a sense of humor. Imagine my surprise, actually my stunned, head swirling amazement, when I discovered there was a God, the Father, Lord Jesus Christ and Holy Spirit, and my heart became sealed in my faith. Who’s laughing now?

What I can tell you, with complete assurance is, that had I been a good mother, loving wife, decent human being and humanitarian, cared actively about a lot of issues like the environment, the end of war and the rights of women, racism and bigotry of all kinds, I would never in a million years or, at least, for my lifetime looked into the possibility of the truth of a triune God, one of whom preposterously now lives within me. Why not? The better question is why? Why, why, why, because, because, because I would never have needed a God. I could do it myself. Why in the world would I ever want a God who would change me from a competent, caring, loving, righteous momma to a sniveling, subservient, powerless Christian ninny with no individuality whatsoever? Well let’s just turn that around to the truth. I was a sniveling, subservient, powerless ninny enslaved to the God of drink, Bacchus. I could not pull myself out of it. I was caught in the grips of an addiction, and I knew of no way to save myself. I had tried many times. As the AA book tells me, “No human power could have relieved my alcoholism, but God could and would if he were sought.” He did, and the point is that in the barren land of my humiliating, profound destruction was the only place, the absolute only place, in my earth heart that I would seek the Lord’s help, take the chance that there was a God who could restore and transform me to a loving, caring, righteous woman.

I don’t honestly know if my own personal journey relates to the wider macrocosmic version of destruction. What will happen to those directly affected by Kristina? Will Christians become more Christian; atheists drawn to look into the God possibility; hearts vulnerable and hurting ask for his help and solutions? I don’t know. I hope and pray. Is there something in there about repentance and the healing of hurting hearts? God says many things about mourning, and certainly in the end in Revelation 21 he tells us he will wipe away every tear. But our tears today are not wiped away, and part of my comfort needs to come from feeling that sometimes mourning is a necessary state. As I was searching scripture appropriate to Katrina and Iraq, et. al., for an answer I came across, not a joyful passage, but a meaningful one for the circumstances. It is contended that Solomon, in his debauched and extreme eld, penned the pessimism of Ecclesiastes. Perhaps that’s why he could say something about mourning that resonates with me as a closing commentary, and I hope with you.

Diana Burg

http://www.amourningdevotional.com

Mourning Glory – A Devotional for Grieving is a book for helping those struggling through a loss and looking for support and comfort.

Diana is a writer and author with several books in print. She writes everything – novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and poetry. Her passion is writing Christian books.

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