Tag Archives: God

Grief

My dad died last Saturday. It was expected, and so completely not expected. Six years ago he had three major surgeries; recovery from the last one took a full year. Last May he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis, which can be treated but not cured. The doctor said he’s had patients live five years with that. I learned in February that a few months earlier, Dad was given a year to eighteen months to live. So in a very real sense, I’ve been expecting this for six years … and a year … and three months. But still ….

There is a loneliness in grief, the reality that even when surrounded by loving, caring people who are doing everything right to offer support, none can know truly what I am feeling, how I am grieving. Even those who have known deep grief cannot know my grief. There are common aspects of grief, common stages; yet there can be no truly common grief.

And so we grieve alone, even in the midst of other grievers—others who have experienced the same loss.

And yet there is One who not only grieved His own loss, but whose omniscience allows Him to know the deepest solitude of my loss—One who truly can, and does, grieve with me … and in whose comforting presence I do not grieve alone.

31-Day Writing Challenge—Day 22 :: Still

Prior Prayers

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Another shooting. A dozen more people killed by bullets. Another argument about gun control and gun rights. Undoubtedly, the words, “our prayers are with the victims and their families,” will be spoken by people of deep faith … as well as by others who never pray yet somehow believe that the promise of prayer is a comfort to those facing deep loss.

I’ve been troubled by the rise in gun violence in our nation, yet have felt at a loss as to any semblance of a solution. I believe in gun rights – and that they ought to be limited. I believe in gun control – and that it, too, ought to be limited. And I believe in confidentiality—between doctor and patient, lawyer and client, clergy and parishioner—and that limits there are necessary.

The challenge is that those three values—gun rights, gun control, and confidentiality—cause us to argue, even when most reasonable people would agree on one goal: we need to reduce gun violence.

There’s something else I believe in: prayer. And not simply as comfort, but as real and powerful … a mountain-moving force.

Or do I? Do I really believe that prayer can not only move mountains, but can move the God who created those mountains? Because if I did believe that, wouldn’t I pray for God to do something about gun violence … before it happens? Wouldn’t I pray for God to somehow help us figure out a way to balance those three conflicting values of gun rights, gun control, and confidentiality? We certainly haven’t figured it out (not that we’ve really tried; we’ve only argued that one outweighs the others).

I was convicted today that I don’t pray enough—or rightly—about these things.

Praying for victims and their families is still good and necessary, but that prayer comes too late. There is a better prayer, a prior prayer: that God would lead our nation to the hard work of solutions, until prayers for victims are no longer needed.

Going It Alone

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Jordan is the type of separation where there is no fellowship with anyone else, and where no one can take the responsibility for you.¹

How many years had Elisha walked with his mentor, Elijah? Seven? Eight? How many times had he witnessed the power of God come down through the words and deeds of the great prophet? Countless times. And now….

For days now, Elisha has known the time was at hand. Three times the prophet had told his young protege, stay here while I go into the city. Three times, Elisha has refused, insisting that he stay by his side. And in each city, the locals remind him that his master’s days are numbered. I know, he says. Shut up and don’t remind me! And now….

Now Elijah has disappeared, taken up miraculously from before his very eyes. Chariots. Horses. Fire. A whirlwind. And when the tumult dies down, Elisha is alone. Alone on the banks of the river they had crossed together only moments before.

The thunderous drama of the prophet’s exit only magnifies the deafening silence in which Elisha now stands; Elijah’s billowing cloak, now lying in a dusty clump on the parched ground, the only sign that he’d ever been there. And now….

Such spectacles do not come frequently in our lives, but the times of aloneness are all-too-common. We leave the spiritual height of a mission trip and, on returning home, find that no one really understands, and too few even seem to care. We meet God at a mountain camp, only to return to the doldrums of daily life back at sea level. We are fêted well as we say goodbye to a ministry we have loved and prospered, then find ourselves alone and waiting by the Jordan for some sign that we are not really alone.

And there on the banks of our own Jordan, as Chambers says, “you have to put to the test now what you learned when you were with your Elijah. … If you want to know whether God is the God you have faith to believe Him to be, then go through your Jordan alone.”

Think about that for a moment: Do you want to know whether God is the God you think He is? You can only know it when you get alone. No one can know it for you. Friends, mentors, a spouse… they can all tell you it’s true… that God is true. But only you can know it.

In order to know he was not alone, Elisha had to pick up the prophet’s cloak and put it around his own shoulders. What is that cloak for you? Perhaps a Bible that has sat too long untouched. For me it was a Jacob-like wrestling match with God (see Genesis 32:22-32).

Pick up the cloak and know the truth of what you believe.

¹ [Oswald Chambers, My Utmost For His Highest, Aug 11. See 2 Kings 2:1-25.]

God and Butterflies

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It was just laying there on the sidewalk—a big, beautiful butterfly. Papilio cresphontes; Giant Swallowtail, as we learned later.

My wife was walking our dog when she saw the butterfly on the ground. It didn’t move when she bent down for a closer look, and so, thinking it was dead, she wanted to bring it home and preserve its beauty. Until it hopped a few inches away.

She tried again. Again, it hopped away. Obviously not dead, but was it only a matter of time? A couple more tries, a couple more hops, and then… the wings stretched out in that groggy, not-quite-awake kind of stretching we do when we’re struggling to rise too late out of a too-deep sleep.

The beautiful black and yellow wings carried the Papilio a few feet more before one final burst of life lifted him into the air to do what butterflies do: grace the air with the lightness of a falling leaf, the tiptoed dance of a ballerina on the stage.

Mesmerized, my wife realized what she’d been hearing in the podcast coming through her earbuds: Look at the birds (or the butterflies). They don’t plant or harvest or store away any food for tomorrow, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you more valuable to him than they are?

On this day, God wanted that Giant Swallowtail to fly again—and to demonstrate his love to my wife. She needed that. So did I.

But something else also struck me as she shared this. That butterfly had seemed nearly dead, and it probably was. Sometimes that’s how we feel, too. Life has beaten on us for so long that we almost can’t take it anymore. Getting out of bed is exhausting. Getting the kids to school, buying groceries, making dinner… the most normal, uneventful parts of life threaten to unravel us.

We’ve faced death and loss and grief and hopelessness for so long, all we can do is lay down like that butterfly.

But like that butterfly, I think God wants us to fly again. It may take a few frightened hops, some groggy stretching of our wings… but I think we’ll get up in the air. And someone watching—like my wife with that butterfly—will see us and praise God. And maybe they’ll get up in the air again, too.

The Rushed Contemplative

Musings on Life and Faith