It is remarkable how the risen, resurrected Savior sits with us in our sorrow.
Tag: loss
It’s interesting, on a Sunday afternoon errand, I discovered two sheep that moved into the area. “They are Dorper sheep”, their ninety-year-old owner informed me. He’d wanted a pair of Dorper sheep since he was a little boy. The sheep keeper leaned heavily into the saddle of his field-weary four wheeler and adjusted the cannula that fed oxygen to his failing heart. “Sheep are born looking for a place to die.” It was a startling sentence, especially as I considered the myriad of scriptural implications.
In the crush of grief, Jesus asks us, really dares us, to look more closely at Him and to hold out for His forthcoming reality. As believers, our existence will not end in death. Our loved ones fall asleep and when that sleep comes we’ll be tempted to forget about the promise yet to come. That is why it is imperative that we pull close to our Savior and trust His report over our own crashing emotions.
Pause with me for a moment and revel in the reality of the God of heaven slowing down to sit with us in our sorrow. Note, He is not inexperienced with suffering: Jesus has walked on earth in flesh and subjected the Godhead to the excruciation of temptation, the trauma of sin and even death. God is not too far-off to understand or too insulated to empathize.
cemetery, darkness, grief, restoration, loss, recovery, wholeness, presence, Immanuel
t’s always alarming to me how when someone important passes away, the sun still rises, the coffee still brews, the the laws of physics hold steady and the world moves on even without our loved one in it. We have gone still in grief and shock but everything and everyone around us marches forward as though their life meant so very little in the grand scheme of things.
When precious people pass on, they leave a gaping hole in our lives: a personal Grand Canyon we must learn to maneuver in and around. It’s difficult and different, but by the grace of God, we learn to manage.
Friend, we live in a fallen world with fallen people. Seed will be spilled. Dreams will shatter. We will hurt. But in that hurt we always, always have a choice.
‘What If’ is a query grief insists upon. Mary and Martha each felt it’s provocation and so will we.