December 14, 2012
Desensitized
Farmers talk about having good and bad years with their crops and I
find myself applying the same terminology to the five deaths we’ve had in our
family in the last nine months – this has been a bad year. All but one of the
deaths were somewhat expected, however with each successive funeral, the grieving
process is easier. The world might define the grieving as becoming numb or
desensitized, but from the believers perspective there is a spiritual element that
should not be overlooked. In our grief none of us can say to the other, ‘but
you just don’t understand’ or ‘my sorrow is greater than yours’. “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who
comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble
with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.” (2 Cor 1:3-4 NIV)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----The grief of loosing a loved one into the darkness is the bad event. Those we loose who were in the Lord are merely temporarily disconnected from our presence. We will be back together. Grief does not work towards a change of attitude about them as much as it does towards a change about the whole situation. When we know someone has been lost to death in the fullest sense, there is no prospect of encountering that person again, unless it would be in the foyer of the judgment throne.
-----We who live in the Lord have been called to a life of truth. Therefore, we should not deceive ourselves to attain better feelings. When it is known that a loved one perished in his death, we can not think that it won’t happen for him, or that somehow there will always be around him an eternal calm spot in the lake of fire. We can not take joy in thoughts of his joys, because Hell is not a joyous and blessed place. Nor can we then curse God for making a lake of fire or for our loved one’s appointment to be there. Truth sets mental and emotional boundaries. We can only think into the situation as far as our loved one’s will to choose and our God’s faithfulness to good and right and benefit. So we have to think on into other topics, such that the lost one truly does go lost. That is grief. What we feel for the dead in Christ is celebration mixed with a symphony of sympathies regarding the whole situation and some real longing for more fellowship with the one who‘s no longer stirring. But what never mixes into truthful grief over the death of a believer is that something about his situation is bad or wrong. Nothing about it could be better.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment