When we’ve been utterly shaken by loss, we will meet God.
Possibly a controversial statement that. Let me explain what I mean.
Joseph Scriven, author of the poem and later hymn, “What a Friend We Have In Jesus,” found direct passage to a life devoted to God, because of loss: one fiancée and then another. He experienced the company of the Lord in those losses.
You see, sorrow is etched with truth that cannot be denied, and it demands our honesty, and if only we can be honest, we will be broken, and in being broken we will be given direct passage to the healing room.
And not just is this learned in the initial grief. As we traverse it first time—truly experiencing the overwhelming strains of our sorrow—where we cannot help but encounter God (because of sheer lowly loneliness)—we learn something that will serve us the rest of our days.
Such a thing is the faithfulness of God that shows us that we can endure anything with God as we feel the rawness of our pain, knowing that it WILL overcome us, all the while knowing God has already overcome death—which is the finalisation of despair. Yes, God has overcome despair!
Being pain-free we come to realise is not the goal but finding that we can bear it—that’s the purpose of faith in grief.
It’s almost that when we’re crushed by loss, we suddenly come to realise that eternity has come down to us from on High, and finally we begin to live for God like perhaps we never have before. Suddenly, everything in life is put into its correct perspective, and though we cannot go back to a more comfortable season, we are somehow comforted that part of us went the day our loss began. Finally we see that we were living all our lives to be alive right now as purpose steels itself in us.
Grief really is a mediator, as if Jesus himself, to God. But this can only be when, in the mode of loss, we come to agree that the only thing that matters is eternity itself. The moment we return to earth is the moment pain piques large again.
One of the sweetest gifts of loss is the memory of how God met us there. Whenever we sing our hymns or psalms of praise and lament, we do experience a kind of muscle memory in our mind that evokes the heart. These moments are perhaps the most spiritually touching moments we’ll ever experience.
What better goal for life could there be than to find reason to praise out of utter lament?
I do hope none of this is an offence to you, the reader, because this is a personally held experience.
Photo by Rainier Ridao on Unsplash
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