It is both a wonderful and terrible aspect of God's love that when we lose someone we love, the deep pain we feel can draw us closer to God, the author of life and death. As Christians all our relationships are a triangle, with one another and God at the head. Our deepest selves are connected to one another and to God because it is in him we live and love and have our true being.



For in him (God) we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.' Acts 17:28

It is natural to grieve the loss of someone we love, and God not only does not deny us our grief, he tells us in Matthew 5:4, ?Blessed are they who mourn for they shall be comforted.? What this means is that God calls you in your grief to enter more deeply into communion, communication and relationship to him so that he can lift you on wings of angels through the grief process.

One might ask if this makes the grief process easier, lighter, less intense even. I don't think so. By no means, as Saint Paul would say. God calls us to more deeply examine the powers and attributes which make our lives and our relationships worth the earthly journey.

We can begin to study the nature of love, of forgiveness, of solace, of sorrow, of joy, of joy in the midst of grief, of silence, of oneness within ourselves, with others, with others lost, with our precious Lord, to experience a new wholeness and holiness in our Lord Jesus. For we are not lost to each other. We will meet again, dance and sing and feast, banquet with our Lord at our marriage supper as at the wedding of Cana.

If our love of the other person who died is deep enough we may even feel we cannot live without them. In this case only God can relieve our pain. It is just by drawing near to him that we can experience solace, a healing and restorative solace, that can put us back on the path of life and more than that a fulfilling life. The greater our sense of loss may well mean the greater our closeness to God, our willingness to let him enter our pain and heal because we so need him. It is a time to build trust and to come to believe and to surrender to a God who will deliver us out of all our afflictions. The grief process can reveal more fully than at other times the God who is enough and more than enough.

The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears them; he delivers them from all their troubles. The LORD is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. Psalm 34:17,18

"My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." 2 Corinthians 12:9

With the loss of each person, each reliance temporary and earthly or final and eternal, we come to an end, and what must we do just to survive, to keep on living? We must begin a new journey, take a new risk, follow a different and unknown path. Boy, these are all my favorite things! Right? No, wrong! These are the things I fear, almost to the point of dread, the very most in my sojourn here. Will it be an adventure? Will it call me toward the God whose love is an unbounded and timeless consuming fire? Will the grief shake me and root up and out all the earthly things which keep me from him; keep me clinging to anything I can recognize, touch, see or feel; keep me supported, restrained and even melded into this world? Yes is the answer, I think, to all of these questions.

"Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." The words "once more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken that is, created things so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Hebrews 12:26,27

Do we have a choice about this new journey into grief? Yes, we always have choices. So why should I make the choice to cede my grief process to God when I am sheered of the wool of the presence, the comfort and love of the person or thing whose loss I have suffered?

Because it is in my nakedness, in my vulnerability, in my birth into grief that the Lord can show me, can teach me, can inculcate into me, can impress upon me like a seal my true and eternal self in him. My grief can be my door to forever with my precious Lord and Savior, Jesus.

For none of us lives to himself alone and none of us dies to himself alone. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord. Romans 14:7,8.