GOOD GRIEF!
Living Through Seasons of Loss
Ecclesiastes 3:11, ‘He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.’ (NIV)
October 3rd, 2022
FALL: a LOVE STORY
Isaiah 55:8-9, ‘”For My thoughts about mercy are not your thoughts and My ways are different from yours. As high as the heavens are above the earth so My ways and My thoughts are higher than yours.’” (TPT)
No matter who we are, we have all experienced love affairs of the heart. Love varies, and with whom we become deeply loved by and with whom we deeply love, the nature of the love affair can differ. But it is all defined as ‘love’. When we say the words, ‘I love you!’ it can mean many different things; it also is universal—although some might say, ‘I have never loved like this!’ or ‘I love you more than anyone has ever loved before.’ Even still, it is universal.
I love my husband very much. I love my children a lot. I love my grandchildren so much. I love my parents deeply. I love friends and family greatly. I may even love the ocean or the mountains, a puppy or a memory. Sometimes people even find themselves still loving someone who hurt them dreadfully. It is the same love, but it is dissimilar. How I love my husband, my son, my dad, my grandson is intensely but contrasting; how I display my love for each of these men in my life is greatly varied. But I love them magnanimously all the same. I never could fathom any one of them no longer in my life.
So, we have people—and even things—in our lives that we love. We come to count on each other; we grow accustomed to one another. We form habits and rituals surrounding the lives we share and the lives we lead. We become whole with each other; another completes us, the missing puzzle piece. Even the families created by growing love between two people eventually births a legacy when bonds are formed, relationships are forged, and lifetimes mingle.
And then someone passes—or goes away. One season ends. And another begins. Incredulity and anguish immediately are planted in a fertile soil where any hopelessness can grow, watered by the grief of tears, and fertilized by disbelief. Soon, heartache and lostness replace the peace that once flourished. It feels so foreign and unnatural, yet it truly is quite common, to feel as if a world has ended, that nothing will ever be the same again, that we too wish we could die as well. The hard thing is life keeps on living—people’s lives go on, time marches forward, the clock continues to tick, and we sometimes feel as if we stayed stuck in the past. In fact, sometimes we wish we could…stay, mortared, tethered, fixated, on the last place our loved one was at.
Just as love is universal, so is grief. And there is no better One to understand our grief than Jesus. Just as He knows the complications of love and loss in the human heart, so He also has deep compassion for our grief. He too suffered. He lost ones He loved. Take Lazarus. Jesus stood outside the tomb where his best friend lay, and the Bible says He wept, that tears streamed down His face. Furthermore, every time a person chooses not to follow—or falls away from—Jesus, He loses someone He loves. Jesus also was betrayed by a close friend; He was sold out for several shekels and a sloppy kiss. In fact, Jesus was betrayed by all of mankind, by everyone He came to save. He piled our shame on His own shoulders and buried us in the nailprints in His hands. He died so we could live. He placed eternity in my heart and yours. There will never be another to fathom your grief just as you feel it, to understand your loss, to help you heal and flourish again, like Jesus. His Father has a purpose behind who is called home and when, and also why some people leave us when we never imagined they could. If we can but trust the Lord for the outcome, our grief will have meaning.
Isaiah 55:10-11, ‘”As the snow and rain that fall from heaven do not return until they have accomplished their purpose, soaking the earth and causing it to sprout with new life, providing seed to sow and bread to eat, so also will be the Word that I speak; it does not return to Me unfilled. My Word performs My purpose and fulfills the mission I sent it out to accomplish.”’ (TPT)
