by Max Lucado
__________________________________________________________
“David sang this lament over Saul and his son Jonathan, and gave orders that everyone in Judah learn it by heart.”
2 Samuel 1:17-18, The Message
David called the nation to mourning. He rendered weeping a public policy. He refused to gloss over or soft-pedal death. He faced it, fought it, challenged it. But he didn’t deny it. As his son Solomon explained, “There is…a time to mourn” (Ecclesiastes 3:1,4).
Give yourself some. Face your grief with tears, time, and ‘one more’ face your grief with truth. Paul urged the Thessalonians to grieve, but he didn’t want the Christians to “carry on over them like people who have nothing to look forward to, as if the grave were the last word.” (1 Thesselonians 4:13 The Message).
God has the last word on death. And, if you listen, he will tell you the truth about your loved ones. They’ve been dismissed from the hospital called Earth. You and I still roam the halls, smell the medicines, and eat green beans and Jell-O off plastic trays. They, meanwhile, enjoy picnics, inhale springtime, and run through knee-high flowers. You miss them like crazy, but can you deny the truth? They have no pain, doubt, or struggle. They really are happier in heaven.
And won’t you see them soon? Life blisters by at mach speed. “You have made my days a mere hand breadth; the span of my years is as nothing before you. Each man’s life is but a breath” (Psalm 39:5).
When you drop your kids off at school, do you weep as though you’ll never see them again? When you drop your spouse at the store and park the car, do you bid a final forever farewell? No. When you say, “I’ll see you soon,” you mean it. When you stand in the cemetery and stare down at the soft, freshly turned earth and promise, “I’ll see you soon,” you speak the truth. Reunion is a splinter of an eternal moment away.
So go ahead, face your grief. Give yourself time. Permit yourself tears. God understands. He knows the sorrow of a grave. He buried his son. But he also knows the joy of resurrection. And, by his power, you will too.
Question: Why is it so often so difficult in our culture to face our grief, not as God’s confident sons and daughters, but “like the rest of men, who have no hope“? (1 Thessalonians 4:13)
You can comment on this devotional online at:
http://thoughts-about-god.com/blog/2009/09/11/ml_grief/
****************************************************************
Max Lucado
From: Facing Your Giants
© (W Publishing Group, 2006)
Used by permission
To learn more about Max Lucado visit his website at:
http://www.maxlucado.com/about/
It is comforting.God bless+
Oops! I went over the words limit. Please my Christian brothers and sisters pray for my family and extended family, the neurotics, the drug addicted, the snob, the embarassed, the guilt ridden, so that we cal all open our hearts and ears and let the Lord Jesus speak and hear Him. Thank you all for these sanity saving devitionals. Your sister in Christ. Sonia Silverhorn
Every day this week the devotionals were ‘like’ meant especially for me and my situation. This one is “dead”on as we say. My 85 yr. old mother took ill one month ago and suffered a bout of dementia that scared those who saw it. She has now been stabilized and seems to be on her way to 100 as I have always said she would reach one day. My brothers and one sister are flabberghasted that their mother made it through yet another near death experience and came back to tell the tale and to…
Heaven is a place that well will all enjoy, when God comes again… The bible tells us that “the dead knows nothing”, those who are dead are in a sleep, their spirit/breath has gone back to the one who gave it in the beginning, during creation, God made man; in this process God breathe the breath of life in Adam and Eve. When we die/fall asleep, this same breath/spirit goes back to the giver who is God. Every one who has died know nothing until God cracks the sky and the lound trumpet…
I lost my aunt this year and another one last year. They both meant so much to me and i can remember crying and mourning about their passing away. But I thank God for their lives and the giudance they have brought me up with. I thank God for involving them in my life which had taught me a great deal. It’s hard facing the fact that they are now gone. But thanks be to God for they are now resting in peace.
Thank you brother Max for this devotional.
The fear of seperation through “Death” is embed in our psyche, the legacy that we have been carrying on for centuries inherited from our first parents.
The fear is there to stay, hope to meet again is a wishful thinking to many.
It needs lot of faith-strong- to dismiss lightly or resist the pang of loss of a near and dear one is not easy for almost all people.
A very thought-provoking devotion. Thank you brother, Max. Blessings.