"Good Grief"

Over the past few years and in recent months, I have both experienced grief and had close family and friends lose loved ones. Because of the acuteness of the pain, the common occurrence of grief, and the request of friends experiencing this for the first time, I am passing on some truths to you in love. These come from a passion to provide comfort, healing ministry and godly perspective to those suffering and perplexed…pressed beyond the breaking point. Many of the insights I learned from my father, one of the most gracious and caring pastors I’ve ever known.

The following is an excerpt from a Memorial Service (funeral) that I recently performed. It’s from the middle third of the program…of course this part of the service is usually followed by me speaking of “the promised resurrection” and “life as a blessing.” I hope and pray it will bless and minister to you:

Let’s be honest. This is a tough time…for this family…for all of us. So my suggestion at the outset is that we trust God, even if we’re not in the habit of doing so. Let’s trust God and look to Him to give us what we need to face this day and to cope with the loss of “your loved one” in the days and years ahead.

In this time of grief and sorrow, we turn to the Word of God for comfort and hope. Hear this word from Psalm 46:1 and 10:

“God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in times of difficulty.

…Be still and know that I am God…”

In times of Crises and Challenge, God’s Word speaks to us…His presence meets, ministers to and heals us! God will provide mercy, tender compassion, and gracious strength.

“Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not search about anxiously, for I am your God. I will strengthen you, surely I will help you. Surely I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” –Is 41:10

“God is near to the broken hearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.” –Ps 34:18

“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in this time of need.” –Heb 4:16

PRAYER

At this celebration of “your loved ones’ life”, let us remember that it is the love in this world that counts, without it nothing else really matters.

Mitch Album’s book – “5 People You Meet in Heaven” speaks to this….

“Lost love is still love -- it takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see their smile or bring them food or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. But when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory…Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it. You hold it. You dance with it…

Life has to end, Love doesn’t.”

Our final freedom – “We cannot control what happens to us. Yet, we can control how we choose to respond to whatever happens to us.”

As a family and friends, you now begin living with something you can’t change. You can’t bring “your loved one” back to this life, but there are some things you can do. So I offer these gentle suggestions for the future:

1. Remember the good times…

Agree that at certain times you will get together as family/friends and celebrate the good times and good memories – those warm, together times filled with laughter and appreciation.

2. As a family, remember the God who gave us life is able to give us hope…

“Your loved one” was a good man, and you will miss him. God is a Great God, and you can trust Him. This family is doubly blessed.

3. Remember two things about God we ought always to keep before us:

· Grief was created by God. Grief is the price of loving deeply. Grief won’t kill us. But never loving anyone will leave us deader than a stump. So be thankful for your grief, and the love it represents.

· God knows our grief. God created grief as a safety valve. His nature is to visit us in our grief and stay as long as we need Him. Jesus was “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” Our Heavenly Father lost a son and became the Father of Mercy…God of all Comfort.

As we grieve the death of “your loved one,” there are four specific things we can do to help God help us.

1. We can give our anger to God… He can handle it. He understands it.

2. We can give our questions to God… He welcomes them…all of them.

3. We can allow God to give us healing… Seek His healing, pray for it, be open to it.

4. We can allow God to give us His comfort and peace…God never wants us to be left alone.

Unless our hope is in God, we are sadly without hope. But we can always call upon God and take Him at His promise.

“Grace-Grace to your mountains…Shalom-Peace that passes understanding in your storms…and “May the Grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Agape-Love of Father God, and the intimate fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all…and your loved ones”(2Cor.13:14).

Up-Hill

In numerous sermons, I have recounted the famous incident of Churchill in a fox-hole during WWI. He was as afraid & disillusioned as a human soul can be…& contemplating desertion from the army. He wrote of his miserable condition & confusing thoughts to his love back home…Clementine. She speedily returned a letter to him that quoted their favorite poem by Rosetti. It is also 1 of my all-time favorites…& has often been an instrument of the Spirit of God to encourage my heart while instilling resolve…as it did with Sir Winston Churchill.

Up-Hill

Does the road wind up-hill all the way?
Yes, to the very end.
Will the day's journey take the whole long day?
From morn to night, my friend.

But is there for the night a resting-place?
A roof for when the slow dark hours begin.
May not the darkness hide it from my face?
You cannot miss that inn.

Shall I meet other wayfarers at night?
Those who have gone before.
Then must I knock, or call when 'ust in sight?
They will not keep you standing at that door.

Shall I find comfort, travel-sore and weak?
Of labor you shall find the sum.
Will there be beds for me and all who seek?
Yea, beds for all who come.

-by Christina Rosetti

This poem (as is often said by critics & admirers), is an allegory…which is a type of poetry that is meant to convey a message or doctrine by using people, places or things to stand for abstract ideas. Rosetti had a very strong belief in the afterlife. Now read the poem again & think of the road as the journey of life & the respondent who answers the questions as God. So in the first stanza the traveler asks, “Does the road wind uphill all the way?” (Is the journey of life uphill all the way?) & God answers "Yes, to the very end" (death). The traveler then asks, "Will the day's journey take the whole long day?" (Will there be any rest during the day from my long journey) God answers no, you will struggle from beginning to end. Then the traveler asks "But is there for the night a resting-place" (Is there life after death) God Answers, "You cannot miss the Inn" (Heaven)...you can figure out the rest.

This is an accurate interpretation in many ways; however, more pertinent to me, is applying the poem as a prophetic call to embrace the principle & power of the Cross of Christ. That makes the Hill a struggle with the obedience of faith & the desire to be a faithful witness.

The “HILL” is our wrestling with the world, flesh & devil; & the “REST” is the fruit & experience that accompanies a revelation of the finished work of HIS cross!!!

"To Write or not to Write?"

“To write, or not to write?!?”...that was the question. For days I couldn’t get it out of my mind, so I surrendered 4 hours to rereading "Hamlet" highlights while journaling the seeming implications to my writing endeavors. Although the political & principled struggle there was insightful, & the pages I focused on were poetic & prophetic, it was actually an exercise of identity settling rather than literary studying. My investigation was bringing me face to face with the man in the mirror while challenging me once again to embrace the calling of being both a life-long learner & a yielded messenger…writing about the search & discoveries from Kingdom perspectives. I instinctively knew this would necessitate a vital connection between worship & work, waiting & writing. For the last few years, & in this blog, the emphasis for me has been the waiting on God & quest for truth…but winds of writing are beginning to blow.

The search for understanding, to discern what’s significant & discover God’s perspective is nothing new to me, it has been a life-long passion & pursuit. In the past, I threw my life into Bible study, fasting, prayer, ministry service, mission trips, voracious reading & Seminary research. This last season was different though…new, another level altogether. It seems I’ve been in a time of wilderness isolation & soul searching. It’s not a wilderness wandering, but a temporary withdrawal from busyness and visibility so that God may revive my heart & renovate my mind. During this difficult season, I have yielded to the Spirit’s prompting to “wait on the Lord…be still…”-Ps.27:14, 4:1-6, 46:10, 145:15.

I have often heard it said that to wait upon the Lord is about attentive service like that of a restaurant waiter. That is simply not true, & is evidence of our humanistic, performance oriented, works righteousness bias. The Hebrew word actually means “to bind or tie to,” while the Greek emphasis is “sitting down beside to receive.” Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines “wait” as: 1.To stay or rest in expectation; to stop or remain stationary, till the arrival of some person or event. The call to stop, rest, remain stationary & receive often requires being alone with God & isolated from others.

There’s great value in finding a “lonely place apart,” like Jesus. Christopher Maricle captures the essence of this by saying, “We need to spend time by ourselves in contemplation…to focus inward…alone with our thoughts…in considering our actions in light of our faith…a time for sorting out how we feel and think about a concern and how to respond to it in the future…and to take the results of our introspection to God in prayer.”

No, I haven’t been writing blogs, but I have been waiting on God, wondering about my difficult experiences, & writing devotionally & reflectively. While it is certainly true that many things have been too painful to write about (that stuff is fuel for worship & material for prayer), it’s also true that my greatest desire is to write as a form of worship that imparts spiritual wisdom & revelation. Hence, the hesitation, delays…the patience of waiting on the Lord. As I said in my previous blog, “I have purposefully chosen not to publish my recent writings as I seek greater understanding & study enemy tactics while putting the King & HIS Kingdom 1st.”

It takes time to know what you’re to say. You can’t really have perspective on things while you’re in them…you can’t accurately reflect on something when you’re sitting in it. That’s what perspective is all about…the ability to discern the reality, relation & importance of things. I believe there’s a freedom that comes from being outside the situation, system, season…the ability to see & say things that I think everybody’s thinking or feeling…to look at situations & environments & to understand what we’re dealing with…to express issues that may be difficult for someone experiencing a situation or inside the system to see or say. To “examine all things, holding fast that which is good…to speak the truth in love”-1Thes.5:21, Eph.4:15.

Shakespeare’s commentators have always argued over the actual meaning & purpose of his world-famous monologue that opens “To be or not to be” (you should read & study it yourself). The main disagreement is whether the focus is placed on "life vs. death" or "action vs. inaction." I believe there’s an element of both; & I contend that in seeking life & experiencing the death of anything, there needs to be a time of thinking & processing for the purpose of future determined action. With Hamlet's indecisiveness & uncertainty of knowledge as major themes in the play, many commentators were inspired to read the choice between the life of action ("to be") and life of silent acceptance ("not to be") as a primary focus of Hamlet's dilemma. I, however, believe & espouse E. Prosser’s view that "This soliloquy is a meditation on the central theme of the duties and temptations of a noble mind in an evil world."

I, therefore chose “To live & write” by consciously acknowledging “tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune…and as a vehicle to lose the name of action.” Henri Bergson expressed this by saying, “Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” Or shall we say, “Write like a man of thinking & action”…I am, & I hope to.

"Glimpses of Glory"

While reading a favorite book a few years ago, the following paragraphs jumped off the page and gripped my heart and mind. I found myself captivated with reflections on Jesus my Lord, and the example of my wife Hope. Through my wife more than any other…I have caught “glimpses of HIS glory.”

The context of the following excerpts is Amy Carmichael’s remembrance of a most difficult season of spiritual warfare and life/ministry opposition. She writes more penetrating and poignant than any I’ve read. It affects me similar to my wife’s journals and letters. In the midst of trials…troubles, she tells us of intense perplexities, and “no way of getting advice, for there was no precedent to follow: no one had been this way before---we had crossed an invisible frontier into an unknown land…but, in that land we met our Lord and learned to know HIM…there were (also) little, tender refreshings…infantile things that would have been nothing to the great or strong, but which to us were like a mother’s reassuring touch.”

For all who have been to “that land,” and in gratitude for my wife Hope that has been there with me, I pass on this prophetic encouragement:

“My flesh and my heart faileth”—Let them fail. For “God is the strength of my heart and my portion for ever.” Has anyone ever been able to tell what our glorious Lord can be to and through a man, woman, or little child whom HE is training to wait upon HIM only?

No one has ever been able to tell it. I search for words like jewels, or stars, or flowers, but I cannot find them. I wish I could, for this book may fall into the hands of someone who has been hindered from caring to know HIM by the dull and formal trapping which our dull and formal thoughts have laid upon HIM—strange disguise for such a radiance. How can I commend my Master? I have not seen HIM yet, but I have caught glimpses!”

Then, after speaking of the emotional separation we all have with other humans that often produces caution or withdrawal from them; she states that in spite of this warning instinct, “Sometimes there is a lovely freedom…each is at home in the other’s rooms. There is a joy in that sense of sureness, in understanding and in being understood. There is joy in the recognition of that which makes it safe to trust to the utmost of the utmost. What makes it so? It is the golden quality of love perfected in strength. That gold is Christ. Or some sharp test takes that friend unawares. You see the life reel under shattered blows; perhaps you see it broken. And you look almost in fear. Thus suddenly discovered, what will appear? And no base metal shows, not even the lesser silver, but only veins and veins of gold. That gold is Christ.

Without HIM, Lover of all lovers, life is dust, With HIM it is like rivers that run among hills, fulfilled with perpetual surprises. He who knows his Lord as Savior and King is taken, as old Richard Rolle declares, into a marvelous mirth, so that he as it were sings his prayers without notes. Life is battle—yes, but it is music. It knows the thrill of brave music, the depths and heights of music. It is life, not stagnation. Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good. Blessed (happy, very happy) is the man or woman that trusteth in HIM.” –quote excerpts from Gold Cord by Amy Carmichael

My wife Hope has both embodied and instructed me in these realities and truths. I pray that everyone who reads this will learn the revelation that “Life is battle---yes, but it is music!”...and put your hope and trust in the Lord. May you wait on the Lord for renewal and so, become an instrument of little refreshings, an understanding soul, a vessel yielded to provide “glimpses of glory!”