This from one of our newer members and good friend of mine, Heath Twyman:
Good Grief!
A commonly said, but rarely considered phrase, an oxymoron of the truest sorts. What could possibly be good about grief? I often find myself pondering such quandaries. How could such a saying have even been conceived? What sort of twisted individual could find goodness in grief? Of all the emotions, feelings, or experiences one could possibly go through or endure, it would seem grief would be the one to be most vehemently detested. Strange as it might sound, this commonly held thought actually runs counter to the message conveyed in the Bible, and whoever thought up this “silly” phrase may have had it right.
Until this past year, I had no idea what grief or pain or loss truly was. As a pastor I had preached more funerals than I can remember and knew all the right things to say, as far as things a pastor should say in times of loss. But then things changed. In the last twelve months, I suffered great loss personally and gained a new perspective. With an unexpected divorce, the loss of my ministry (for me an identity), and the splitting of my family, the knowledge of my head became the experience of my heart. I now know what it is to truly grieve and I'm currently learning what it means to experience the GOODNESS of God through the most difficult and painful experience of my life.
So, how could I possibly experience and appreciate God’s goodness in the midst of grief, arguably life’s most painful experience? Matthew 5:4 says “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted.” The Bible actually says that when we mourn, we are blessed, and I believe apart from the experience we could never fully appreciate the entire nature of God’s goodness.
Worried you may never receive this wonderful blessing???! Fear Not!!! The Bible also says in John 6:33 “…In this life you WILL have trouble, but fear not, for I (Jesus) have overcome the world.” We spend so much of our human existence doing our best to avoid pain and embrace pleasure but as people (even believers) we are guaranteed to experience trouble. If you’ve been fortunate enough to have lived long enough to be reading these words, you’ll without a doubt know this to be true.
I know I’ve said a lot, but it still seems like we haven’t much gotten to the “good part.” So far it seems like all we’ve covered is the part where life is guaranteed to be painful! How do I experience the blessing and goodness of God in the midst of pain, grief, and mourning?
The Bible offers what seems to be yet another paradoxical conundrum. One story, of many if I’m being honest, that always perplexed me, was the story of Moses lifting up the serpent on the staff. (Numbers 21:4-8) I’ll only paraphrase but basically the Israelites grumbled against God and as a result He sent poisonous snakes to bite and kill the ungrateful people. When they asked Moses to help them God told Moses to make a bronze staff with a bronze serpent wrapped around it for the people to look at. God would heal them through this method somehow. Isn’t that strange? Stranger yet, in the New Testament John 3:14-16 Jesus says of himself: “In the same way that Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up: that whosoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” Confused yet? LOL! Jesus compared to a snake? What possibly could this mean?
In both cases God could have just miraculously spoken the word and the pain and death and consequences of sin could simply disappear. The grief of such tragedy could simply be forgone, but God chose another way. It’s not running from, dodging, or avoiding the painful things but rather facing them head on that we find the deliverance and blessing. It’s in embracing the absolute horror of the cross and curse of the serpent that we come to peace and experience God’s greatest blessing, eternal life. If we look at the cross and the characters present within the storyline it doesn’t take long at all to identify ourselves, the objects for which he was slain. Peter – the one who denied his best friend in his most desperate hour of need, the thief – who lived an entire life full of sin but was fully pardoned because of the ludicrous grace of God, the crowd – who demanded the blood of an innocent man, Thomas – whose heart was full of doubt, the list goes on and on and somewhere in that crowd is a man or woman who sinned the same way I do, and who was guilty of hanging an innocent man on the cross to die the most gruesome and painful of deaths. This thought makes me want to run and hide in guilt and shame. I want to run from the grief and pain of my own evil decisions, but counter to my most basic of instincts, my freedom actually comes as Pastor Brett says, in “embracing the suck”. It’s in facing our grief, our guilt, our pain, and our shame through the lens of the cross that we are able to see the goodness of God shining through. Jesus, the man who did exactly that, embraced every bit of suck there was to embrace in the entirety of history. When we fully embrace the awful beauty of his sacrifice, we too can embrace pain and suffering and even grief with a since of hope and blessing knowing that the pain of this life is only temporary, and the way to an eternal life without pain comes through embracing the most painful thing of all, the cross of Jesus Christ.
-Heath Twyman
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