“Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted.”
— Matthew 5:4 (NRSV)
Oh how we grieve in this
life.
But we yet not grieve as
God grieves, and we can learn a lot about self-care and the appropriateness of
grief when we take counsel directly from the Spirit that meanders all through
life, grieving eternally—not that God is only grieving.
When we grieve as God
grieves, then we are comforted with a comfort only God can give: a very clean
and succinct pain that heals as it cleanses us with a thrush of divine
antiseptic.
***
But again, how common it
is to grieve in this life, for we are continually losing things, whilst the
things we gain lose their significance—their novelty—very easily.
Our losses, however, hit
us on a grander scale.
Grief in this life—in this
worldly existence—paralyses us two ways: we deny it because it’s too painful or
we are angered by it and blame everything, including God. Neither results in
healing, because neither is nestled in the will of God. These are maladaptive
forms of grieving, because we grieve the right things in the wrong way.
We have the opportunity, though,
to venture gently on a divine road, into the heart of God so far as true grief
is concerned.
Here is our opportunity to
know God, to think for a moment how God thinks, and to reframe our approach to
grief.
***
God grieves many things
that occur in everyday life. Like sin. Like a turning away from the truth. Like
when people aren’t loved when they deserve to be loved. Like when innocent
people suffer needlessly. The list runs on.
God is not opposed to us
grieving our personal losses; he designed us and built us to grieve, because we
cannot love and not grieve. Grief is one of the central costs of love. And we
will suffer if we love; the name of that suffering is grief.
***
So we have the option and
the opportunity to grieve as a worldly-focused person would, or to transcend those
foci and surrender our sadness to God to be remediated.
God wants us to grieve in
accord with the truth. He wants us to grieve the important things; the
relational things that we get wrong and the relationships we lose. One leads to
others’ healing, the other leads to our own healing.
Grief and healing go
together as a hand goes in a glove. This is God’s will, but it can only occur
when we go God’s way. The key is to grieve as God grieves.
***
The things of love we
grieve appropriately when we lose them. We cannot help it. It is right to
grieve them. When love is the datum point of our grief we grieve as God
grieves. However painful such grief is, it is right and appropriate to grieve.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.
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