Message Recap
Teaching Pastor Megan Marshman ended our series Let's Talk About It by teaching about grief. Megan shared honestly and was vulnerable about her own journey of grief due to the loss of her husband two years ago. She shared that for the first two weeks afterward, she was simply unable to pray. But she knew Romans 8:26-27 and trusted the Holy Spirit interceding on her behalf. She shared that she has learned there is no such thing as perfect prayers, just honest ones.
She shared about Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and David Kessler's book on the stages of grieving and explained that while there may be six (Kessler added meaning after the first publication), they are not prescriptive but rather descriptive and can happen in any order. Someone grieving may not experience them all, either.
She then shared Ecclesiastes 7:1-2, "A good name is better than fine perfume, and the day of death better than the day of birth. It is better to go to a house of mourning than to go to a house of feasting, for death is the destiny of everyone; the living should take this to heart."
As difficult as death is—it's not comfortable, easy or light—it is better for us to talk about it because it makes us think of our own lives. It makes us think about heaven. It makes us think about what we long for. Megan asked us, "What do you long for most about heaven?"
As we consider this longing and wait for the day when it is fulfilled, how do we handle grief on this side of eternity? We need to recognize that life is not as it is supposed to be, but that grief is a gift. She then shared three ways to recognize this.
1. Grief is the appropriate response to life not being as it is supposed to be.
If we don’t grieve, we will look for relief from somewhere else. Or, we will stay stuck in one of the stages of grief and keep reacting to something in life the way we should have reacted to the grief.
Megan shared that grief is the antidote to trauma. Grief moves us forward, down, back, and up. It is pain that demands to be felt, and trauma is what happens when we suffer alone in this pain. In fact, the number one indicator of someone making it through trauma well was that they had a person to process their trauma with.
Megan continued, we grieve because this life falls drastically short of God’s original intent. Megan quoted Alvin Plantinga, "The webbing together of God, humans and all creation in justice, fulfillment and delight is what Hebrew prophets call Shalom. We call it peace, but it's more. It's universal flourishing, wholeness and delight. Shalom is the way things ought to be." Grief is because things aren’t how it’s supposed to be. Grief is necessary for a broken world.
Many of us want relief from grief. God’s response, however, is surprising. God’s promise is 2 Corinthians 1:3-5. We want relief, but God gives us comfort. We want quick relief, but God wants us to be comforted in it.
The choice is ours whether our losses will be terminal to us. Or, we can grieve and allow the gospel to do its work.
2. Grief allows us to experience deeper intimacy with our God, who grieves.
Megan shared Psalm 34:18 and Matthew 5:4. God is not just near, he is grieving too! As we allow ourselves to grieve, we join with Him in His grieving. When love dies, it is love we need the most. We must talk about that which grieves us.
Megan continued, how do we know God grieves? Because Jesus grieves! He was called the man of sorrows. Consider the story of Mary and Martha. They asked Jesus, “where were you?” when Lazarus died. And as you read the passage in scripture, you see that Jesus always intended to raise Lazarus from the dead. And yet, the verse says, Jesus wept. Jesus knew he would raise Lazarus, and He had the power to do it at any time he wanted. But instead, Megan shared, God wanted “Jesus wept” to be included in the Bible, for us. So we would know that Jesus grieves too!
The goal is not to fix grief, but to enter into it and find God there.
Megan continued, God hates pain so much that he did something about it. Someone once told her, the depth of your grief will match the depth of your love. Jesus walked into the pain and grief that lead to the cross because of His love for us. Sin and death are not ignored, they are absorbed by Jesus on the cross. He didn't just grieve sin and death, he took it and gave us hope.
3. We grieve with hope.
Grief and hope are God’s tools to live well in this broken world.
We know that life won’t always be this way. Because of this, a lot of well-meaning Christians suppress how they feel in the name of hope, as if grief and hope are at odds with each other. But God is asking us to feel it alongside the hope we profess. The opposite of joy is not sadness it is hopelessness. Joy and grief coexist. So we feel the pain and sadness while we grieve with hope.
John 16:22 says, "So with you: Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again, and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy." God moves us as we grieve with hope. Today is not always and forever. Sin and death are not forever. Joy, however, is forever.
Megan concluded, one day, our faith will become sight, and we will celebrate. Life will finally be as it should be, and we will celebrate face-to-face with Jesus. Hold onto hope, endure with it.
