February 19

Day 252: Right In The End

I've been pondering this again, even found myself in conversations during the week about this: How can we be hopeful, how can we even dream in the midst of grief?

Grief is not how I innately identify what I am feeling; what all of us are feeling. I'm more inclined to use words like frustration, restriction or disappointment. Maybe you, in fact I'm sure you can relate.

We're all aware of felt loss, to varying degrees. Loss of face-to-face relationships, loss through the cancellation of trips we've look forward to, loss of free space because the kids are doing school from home. Loss of income. Loss of opportunity. Loss of prior freedoms and control. Maybe even the loss of friends and family members due to Covid.

Ed Welch said, "The story of loss goes like this. We are people with affections. Our hearts are about the people and things we love and want to hold on to. Life, however, does not cooperate."

We can pretend to ignore out grief borne out of loss. But it always comes out in other, usually inappropriate ways. By example, the seemingly always angry person may in fact be in profound grief.

But for Christians, avoiding grief is not the pattern set before us. There is not a non-suffering Savior in the Bible. Therefore, there is not be a non-suffering Christian in the world.

Most of us are today in the fight of our emotional if not spiritual lives. We are suffering, and we are going to suffer. Suffering and loss result in grief. We are going to suffer, but the victory in Christ Jesus has already shown up.

We'll all admit, however, that it's hard, really hard to look to the future with optimism when everything present seems so bad. It's almost like dreams are impossible to come by these days.

Our circumstances will not lend well to hope. Our grief doesn't lead well to optimism. Our present fatalism doesn't seem to end up in dreaming of a better tomorrow.

But here's a PSA we all need to hear and believe: The world's grief is unto themselves. It's always temporal. But even in the midst of profound grief we can dream out from the person and work of Jesus Christ.

To do so, we must gain a stronger grip on the reality of Christ. For He is our God who sympathizes at all points and all places of our grief. He is present in our tears. He knows how to weep Himself. And He tells us to bring our griefs to Him.

The intersection of grieving and dreaming is symbolized in the communion bread and cup. Christ's grief-stricken broken body secures and reignites our vision/dream/reality of our Savior's love for us. The bread is the grief. The cup is the hope that comes out of that grief.

Zach Eswine wrote, "Only Jesus can fix everything; and there are some things Jesus leaves unfixed for His glory." Bringing our grieving selves to Him is His glory.

For us, it will never be all good, until He makes it all good. Referring to Abraham, Hebrews 11:10 says, "For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God."

We Protestant Christians are not good with grief. None of us have ever sat in a class on "Sufferology." We don't like to show our sorrow, and we're uncomfortable being around people who do.

But we are all going to continue to suffer loss. We will all continue to grieve those losses. But the joy in on the other side.

We can begin to dream again. We can begin to envision a more vibrant future. It won't come from improved circumstances, for that is only temporal at best.

No, we can be hopeful dreamers, when we look to the One who loves us, gave Himself for us, and is preparing for us "the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God."

It's gonna be rough in the meantime. But it's gonna be right in the end.