It is both a
wonderful and terrible aspect of God’s love that when we
lose someone we love, the deep pain we feel can draw us
closer to God, the author of life and death. As Christians
all our relationships are a triangle, with one another and
God at the head. Our deepest selves are connected to one
another and to God because it is in Him we live and love and
have our true being.
For in him (God) we live and move and
have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We
are his offspring.' Acts 17:28
It is natural
to grieve the loss of someone we love, and God not only does
not deny us our grief, He tells us in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed
are they who mourn for they shall be comforted.” What
this means is that God calls you in your grief to enter more
deeply into communion, communication and relationship to him
so that he can lift you on wings of angels through the grief
process.
One might ask
if this makes the grief process easier, lighter, less
intense even. I don’t think so. By no means, as Saint Paul
would say. God calls us to more deeply examine the powers
and attributes which make our lives and our relationships
worth the earthly journey. We can begin to study the nature
of love, of forgiveness, of solace, of sorrow, of joy, of
joy in the midst of grief, of silence, of oneness within
ourselves, with others, with others lost, with our precious
Lord, to experience a new wholeness and holiness in our Lord
Jesus. For we are not lost to each other. We will meet
again, dance and sing and feast, banquet with our Lord at
our marriage supper as at the wedding of Cana.
If our love of
the other person who died is deep enough we may even feel we
cannot live without them. In this case only God can relieve
our pain. It is just by drawing near to him that we can
experience solace, a healing and restorative solace, that
can put us back on the path of life and more than that a
fulfilling life. The greater our sense of loss may well mean
the greater our closeness to God, our willingness to let him
enter our pain and heal because we so need him. It is a time
to build trust and to come to believe and to surrender to a
God who will deliver us out of all our afflictions. The
grief process can reveal more fully than at other times the
God who is enough and more than enough.
The righteous cry out, and the LORD
hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The
LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are
crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:17‑18
"My grace is sufficient for you, for
my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9
With the loss
of each person, each reliance temporary and earthly or final
and eternal, we come to an end, and what must we do just to
survive, to keep on living? We must begin a new journey,
take a new risk, follow a different and unknown path. Boy,
these are all my favorite things! Right? No, wrong! These
are the things I fear, almost to the point of dread, the
very most in my sojourn here. Will it be an adventure? Will
it call me toward the God whose love is an unbounded and
timeless consuming fire? Will the grief shake me and root up
and out all the earthly things which keep me from Him; keep
me clinging to anything I can recognize, touch, see or feel;
keep me supported, restrained and even melded into this
world? Yes is the answer, I think, to all of these
questions.
"Once more I will shake not only the
earth but also the heavens." The words "once more" indicate
the removing of what can be shaken‑that is, created
things‑so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Hebrews
12:26‑27
Do we have a
choice about this new journey into grief? Yes, we always
have choices. So why should I make the choice to cede my
grief process to God when I am sheered of the wool of the
presence, the comfort and love of the person or thing whose
loss I have suffered? Because it is in my nakedness, in my
vulnerability, in my birth into grief that the Lord can show
me, can teach me, can inculcate into me, can impress upon me
like a seal my true and eternal self in him. My grief can be
my door to forever with my precious Lord and Savior, Jesus
.For none of us lives to himself
alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we
live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So,
whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Romans 14:7‑8
