Disappointment and loss have characterized 2015 in many ways, but now at the end of the year the intensity of events has picked up. It’s official. A season of grief has arrived.
Time to ramble about a season of grief:
- For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven (Ecclesiastes 3:1).
- I am an ignorant man if I think times like this won’t or shouldn’t happen.
- God helps by giving us structure to see times develop in our lives.
- The recent run of events has been difficult.
- Friends of friends got a bizarre cancer diagnosis.
- Friends lost a baby after a full term pregnancy. Hundreds gathered Saturday to support and weep with them as they helped us focus our hearts on the dual reality of pain and hope.
- The three year anniversary of Newtown was yesterday.
- Today marks nine years since the sudden death of my father, Roger Burkholder.
- Many I know will struggle through Christmas facing the reality of 2015’s losses.
- I said a couple weeks ago: pain is not neutral. It will draw you closer to God or push you farther away.
- That death ultimately cannot sting (I Cor. 15:55) does not mean grief’s reality somehow fades.
- Instead, the intensity of the grief shrinks as we grieve with hope.
- I Thess. 4:13 says: But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
- This does not command against grieving. It emphasizes the hope with which we grieve.
- In all thing, in all seasons, praise the Lord. Blessed be His name!