Living with grief
Grief seems an apt topic for the Lenten Season. This is a season in which we quiet ourselves with the reality that we are not God and that He is. We run to him over and over again as we bow ourselves in humility and confession.
The message from the prophet Joel – return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; seems to set things up pretty well.
But what strikes me every year is the call of God to return to Him with all of our heart rather than return to God when we get our stuff together. And yet, that is the consistent call of God to us.
If God says return to me with all your heart, I think that maybe the implication is that we give our hearts to a whole lot of things that are not God.
If the invitation is to return to God with our whole heart, that suggests that we often give Him just a part … a part we are comfortable with.
The story is told about a Carmelite nun who found contemplative prayer to be so hard because her thoughts would wander a thousand times during a 20-minute prayer session.
She was sure her teacher, Thomas Merton, would rebuke her for such a failure, so she was surprised when instead Merton said that her wandering thoughts were just a thousand opportunities to return to God.
Grief is a part of each of our lives. Perhaps the loss of a loved one, the loss of a relationship, the loss of a job … it takes many forms. But
the common denominator is grief and sorrow, and the role they play in all our lives.
C.S. Lewis has much to say about the role of grief, sorrow and the interplay with joy. He once wrote, “Die before you die. There is no chance after.” Another reminds us that we are to live like we are dying. Moses would pray, “Lord teach me to number my days that I might apply my heart to wisdom.”
Grief is not something to be “gotten through.” It is not simply a series of stages that we can mark off much like a to-do list. Grief calls us to sit, to ponder, to reflect, to pray.
We do not recover from grief. Jerry Sittser writes, “We can recover from broken limbs, not amputations.”
“Catastrophic loss will transform us or destroy us, but it will never leave us the same.”
– Jerry Sittser
This depth of sorrow is not something to be fixed in us. It is the sign of a healthy soul, not a sick soul. Jesus declares, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.”
No matter how painful the hurt or how deep the grief, sorrow is good for the soul. It serves to strip life down to the basics. What is really important and of value in my life.
Grief makes us alive to the present. That present may be a sea of nothingness in many respects, but under that sea is a world that is teeming with life. Jean-Pierre De Caussade calls this the “Sacrament of the present moment.”
Sittser writes, “This present moment, this eternal now, is sacred because, however painful it is, it is the only time we have to be alive and to know God. The past is gone, the future not yet here. But the present is alive to us.”
In this present moment, return to God with your whole heart. Acknowledge your confusion, your hurt, your grief. You will find His arms open wide to embrace you.
That’s what Lent is … a thousand opportunities to return to God with all you heart.
About the author: Rev. Wally Johnson is the senior pastor of 1st Church of Sapulpa … his second term of service at that church. He recently left First Presbyterian Church of Tulsa where he served as our parish associate for two years after serving as the senior pastor of Northminster Presbyterian Church in Sarasota, Florida. He is a passionate follower of Jesus Christ and is blessed with a wonderful wife who “puts up with me, five kids (grown and raised) and six grandkids.”