Martin Luther King Jr. and the Language of the Unheard

Some food for thought and prayer.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, "A riot is the language of the unheard." King, the leader and architect of the non-violent Civil Rights movement, said this by way of explaining the pent-up grief and rage of African-Americans in the mid-60s that led to riots. King wasn't condoning rioting; he was explaining it.

The murder of George Floyd on a Minneapolis street has set off a variety of reactions: peaceful demonstrations at the killing of another innocent black man; rioting and looting by some genuinely aggrieved and harmed by a system of justice that puts targets on the backs of African-Americans, with whites often facing no punishment for perpetrating murder; rioting and looting by opportunists, white and black; and, as so often happens, those effectively condoning systemic racism by saying things like, "What happened to George Floyd was wrong, but what 'they' did to that Target store was awful."

I do not condone rioting and looting. But to put that on the same plain as the systemic, constant, and historic danger to which African-Americans are subjected each day is a false equivalence. For African-Americans, it's dangerous to walk on the street, drive in a car, go to a restaurant or a store, do bird-watching, or pray in their church, among other things. The sin of racism causes white people to threaten and call the police on African-Americans engaged in the innocuous activities of everyday life and to see many George Floyds, although not so publicly, killed with sickening frequency.

Can we white Americans muster sufficient empathy and can we who confess faith in Christ, ask God to create enough love for our neighbor for us to see how centuries of being unheard could lead to grief, sadness, distrust, anger, rage, and even rioting?

There ARE opportunists among those who have been stealing merchandise, destroying and defacing buildings, menacing people, and, in at least one case, with the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, destroying history. Some of those opportunists are white, many doing their desecrating work as part of a "cause" while blacks beg them to stop.

But if we allow our minds to wander from the real issue here, we only stoke the fires of more frustration, anger, and rioting in the future.

The real issue is that it isn't safe for African-Americans to live in the United States.

It isn't safe for my great-niece and my great-nephew, whose father is African-American, to live in the land of their birth, where they've already achieved so much. All they have to do is be at the wrong place at the wrong time--African-Americans who dare to live and breathe--and they can be harassed, arrested, or worse.

How do people speak who haven't been heard, when all the modes of expression that others enjoy are blocked to them?

It's long past time for we white Americans to listen.

And for Christians, the act of listening is a faithful way to heed our Lord's call to love our neighbor.

We need to demonstrate by our commitment to love and justice that we value life more than we do property or convenience.

Every life.

Hope in the Midst of Grief (Message at My Mother's Funeral)

Romans 8:31-39
John 11:21-27
[This was shared during my mother's funeral earlier today.]

I was seven-and-a-half years old and it was the Summer of 1961. It was a sunny but breezy morning, a beautiful day, the air clear of humidity, and I was laying in my bed, in that place between sleep and wakefulness.

The night before, we’d gone to my grandparents’ house to see my great-grandmother, who was dying. Mom ushered me to my great-grandmother’s bedside. “Grandma,” mom said, “here’s Mark. Do you remember Mark?” Grandma, her eyes hardly open, put the fingers of her right hand to her forehead and, with obvious frustration at her failure of memory, shook her head, “No.” I knew then that Grandma was not long for this world.

On the glorious summer morning that followed, mom sat on the edge of my bed and woke me. “Mark,” she said, “this morning, Grandma is walking the streets of gold with your great-grandfather.”

My great-grandmother was, it should be said, just like the rest of us, a sinner whose behavior and thinking often, in Saint Paul’s phrase, fell short of the glory of God. But my great-grandmother was also a saint, like all sinners who turn from sin and trust in the crucified and risen Jesus as their God and Savior. She had been saved from sin and death by the grace (or charity) of God that comes to all with faith in Christ. That’s what a saint is!

The image my mom chose to break the news to me that my great-grandmother had died, comes from Revelation 21:21, in the New Testament. It’s part of the vision John, the apostle and evangelist, saw of the heavenly city--part of the new heaven and the new earth that God intends to establish after He draws the curtain on this universe, which is plagued by human sin and death. God will replace it with a city in which all who have been made clean and new by Jesus’ blood, will live with God for eternity. John writes: “The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.”

I found comfort in thinking of my great-grandmother walking those streets in the perfect light of Jesus Christ’s love and rule. It's all the more comforting to me today because it happens to tell the truth about what will happen for all who trust in Christ.

The truth of Jesus’ resurrection and His promise of everlasting life for all who entrust their lives to Him--which is what it means to have faith--can also fill our days with peace, power, and freedom.

Even in the midst of grief.

Once, as you probably know, a friend of Jesus, a man named Lazarus died. Jesus deliberately waited to go to Lazarus’ hometown of Bethany until He knew that Lazarus was dead. Jesus, God in the flesh, intended to demonstrate the power of God over life and death. He would go to Bethany and raise Lazarus from death.

But Lazarus’ two sisters, Martha and Mary, also friends and followers of Jesus, had no idea what Jesus’ plan was. They only knew that they had asked for Jesus to come to Bethany as Lazarus lay on his deathbed, that Jesus hadn’t shown up, and that now Lazarus was dead.

There’s a note of condemnation in Martha’s words when Jesus does come to Bethany. “Lord,” she says, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” But then, demonstrating that she understands that Jesus is much more than a nice man or a great teacher, Martha also says: “...I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask.”

Jesus told Martha: “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.”

And then Jesus asked the most important question any of us will ever have to answer: “Do you believe this?”

It’s the question I want to lay before you today: Do you believe this?

Here’s why this question is so important: When you know that, through Christ and your faith in Him, you belong to God for all eternity, you know that whatever this world can do for you or do to you, doesn’t matter much.

There is no one freer to live life with abandon, joy, peace, and love than the person who belongs to Jesus Christ.

You know how the game ends.

Believing in Jesus isn’t just about having an insurance policy for the sweet-by-and-by.

Believing in Jesus means that because you know Jesus has given you eternity as a gift of grace, you can live this life without fear!

You can live with God’s help in being everything God made you to be! You can love God and others with abandon. You can fight for justice. All because you know that there's nothing that this world can take away from you that means a thing.

That’s freedom!

When Jesus later called his dead friend Lazarus from the tomb, it was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the earthly powers-that-be; they feared that a guy Who could call people back from the dead might swipe their power. Jesus had to be done away with. (Although they didn’t seem to consider how they were going to really to do away with a Man Who had power over life and death.) But you can be sure that for as long as he continued to live on this earth, Lazarus, who like all of us, would someday die, lived with a fierce and joyous abandon.

When you know that one day, you will walk the streets of gold with all who have believed that Jesus is the resurrection and the life, you don’t have a lot to fear or worry about. That’s the life of joyful abandon and peace that God wants for everyone gathered here today.

None of this means that we won’t or shouldn’t grieve. We will grieve. The Bible doesn't say that believers in Christ don't grieve. It says that while we may grieve, we don't grieve as people without hope. So, we will grieve, although I have to say that I did a lot of my grieving for my mom over the past forty-plus years as she seemed, sadly, to turn in on herself more and more.

The abandonment she felt as a child. The depression that dogged her in her adult years. These things made living hard for mom.

And it made things hard for our father, a man I love, appreciate, and respect more than I can say. Dad, like me and like the rest of us, you aren’t perfect. (I mean, for crying out loud, you don’t like garlic!) But you are a great man and a loving man whose care for mom all these years has been an example to us all.

We carry with us the hope that because of Jesus and our faith in Him, neither death, depression, nor anything else this world may bring us will have the last words over my mother’s life.

We can be confident that the person of essential sweetness and vitality we knew in younger years and even sometimes in her later years in the midst of her sad withdrawal, will re-emerge and be brought to perfection in the eternal city:

The woman who used to load up her kids when dad was working nights at the filling station and take us to Marina’s for spaghetti dinner because she was craving spaghetti. (Probably because she was pregnant, because she seemed to be pregnant all the time in those days.)

The woman who would laugh so hard at the jokes of my brother Marty or my cousin Susie that you thought she might burst with joy.

The woman of great creativity who used to enter her creations and take blue ribbons at the State Fair.

The woman who adored just being with her three girls: Betsy, Kathy, and Dianne.

The woman whose face brightened even as she lay dying as she caught sight of her dear son, Martin.

And, if we will trust in Jesus Christ, He will go to work on us in this life (we will become what Martin Luther called, "the Holy Spirit's workshop") and bring to perfection in the life to come, the people we were made to be, unintimidated by disease, death, doubts, hurts, fears, or anything else. It will be, as God said of the perfect world He created before the human race plunged it into sin and death, “Very good.”

If today I could presume to speak a word for my mom, now living in the perfect clarity of eternity, to you today it would be this: If you want to live this life to the full, follow Jesus. And if those streets of gold, laid open to us by the grace and power of God, sound good to you, follow Jesus. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio.]

Tough Questions: How Do I Help My Grieving Friend?

Proverbs 17:17
Galatians 6:2
During this year’s midweek Lenten services, we’re going to tackle some tough questions. They’ll include:

• How can we know that the Bible is God’s Word? 
• How can a loving God let people go to hell? 
• Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God?  
• Is the Biblical view of homosexuality unloving? 

These are all questions that Christians wrestle with, questions that Christians have commonly posed to me through the years.

But without doubt, the question which, in one form or another, Christians ask more than any other is the one we’re addressing tonight: How do I help a grieving friend? Sometimes, the question is posed in this way: What do I say to a friend who has just experienced loss?

As Christians, we know that God commands all people to love God totally and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

We also know that Jesus gives His followers a new commandment: To love fellow believers with the same life-giving love He gives to us.

And we’re familiar with Biblical injunctions like those of Paul in Galatians 6:2: “Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.”

But how do we show or give expression to the love Christ has given to you and me when dealing with our grieving friends?

Many of you could be standing here and offering the wisdom you’ve gained on this subject both through God’s Word and through living out your Christian discipleship. But tonight, I’d like to share what God has taught me about helping our grieving friends.

First, and most importantly, listen to your friend. Frequently, whether it's because of our own discomfort or a penchant for wanting to "fix things," we can go to our grieving friends and shower them with torrents of consoling words. But what grieving people most need is to be listened to. Their unique pain and grief need to be acknowledged.

In the Old Testament book of Job, a man is aggrieved when he loses first, all his sources of wealth and then, all of his children in a natural disaster. Three friends come to visit Job. As we’ve pointed out before, the friends do something very wise at first. They let Job "vent," allowing him to give full expression to his agony, his questions, his anger, even his anger with God. They listen to Job. For seven days.

But then, the friends make a mistake: They open their mouths. My biggest mistakes in life and in trying to help hurting people, have never come from listening. They've always come from talking.

Second, don't try to talk people out of their grief. Grief is something which, over time, follows a more or less natural course. While nobody ever “gets over” their loss, they can reach a point of acceptance. Getting there, sometimes take more time for some people and sometimes less time is required for other people. It depends on the person, their level of faith, and their particular grief. You can't truncate grief with words.

When my grandfather died, a pastor came to the visitation. My grandmother, who had gone into the hospital CCU at the same time as my grandfather was admitted to the ICU, had just been released from the hospital and was at the funeral home in a wheelchair. The pastor, who had never met my grandmother, put his hands on her shoulders and told her, "You're going to be all right. Go home and watch the Bengals game. I predict they're going to win."

Some people think that they need to give the aggrieved person a "pep talk." But such talks are really designed more to make the talker feel they've done a good turn than to do any real good for anyone else. Let your friend grieve no matter how uncomfortable it may make you feel.

Third, don't try to explain what you don't understand. When people grieve over their losses, they wonder, as all of us do, why their loss has happened. Anyone who wants to help the friend who is asking this question must resist the temptation to answer it. In all honesty, your friend doesn't want to have a rational explanation anyway. They simply want to be able to say, "This isn't fair!"

And it isn't fair. Life often isn't fair. At the end of Job's forty-two chapters, we're left with this answer to the question of why grief befalls us: We live in a world where bad things happen. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that bad things rain on the good and the evil alike. Why that is so, no one living on this planet is wise enough to say. Only God knows the answer to the question of why and you and I don't need to play God by pretending to have that answer.

Fourth, let your friend be angry with God. A deeply faithful Christian man whose grandchild had recently died told me, "Sometimes I get angry with God. I know it's horrible; but it's true." I assured him that what he was feeling wasn't horrible. I reminded him of such people in the Bible as David and Job, who always believed in God, but also got angry with God when dealing with grief or the threat of death. And I told the grieving grandfather, "The fact that you're angry with God proves your faith in God. You would never be angry with someone you didn't think was there."

Maybe you’ve noticed this: Most of the time, when we respond to people's anger with condemnation, it only makes them dig in their heels. Trying to prove to an angry person that their anger is unwarranted is a fool's mission. God says in Proverbs 15:1, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Letting your friend get angry with God will prevent their anger from becoming an ongoing feature in their life.

Fifth, don't avoid talking about your grieving friend's loss. Often, friends fear that if they speak of the loss or the one for whom their friends grieve, they'll make their friends feel sadder. But a grieving friend already is sad and if it seems natural to mention a friend's deceased loved one, for example, or if your friend mentions that person, you should be willing to talk about them as well.

A woman once told me, "My friends avoid speaking of my late husband like a plague. What they don't seem to understand is that when they do that, it makes me feel as though they think he was unimportant or that they want to pretend he was never there." Through the years, I have heard that grieving woman's words echoed by other grieving people. You honor your friend when you're willing to discuss with them the people or circumstances they grieve.

Sixth, pray for your friend. You should pray that God will bring them comfort, for sure. But you also should pray that God will use you as a conduit for the blessings you want your friend to receive. Whenever I visit people who are dealing with grief, I always ask God to fill me with His Holy Spirit, allowing God's love for my friend to flow through me. In John 15:5, Jesus says: “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” Jesus also says that the world will know Him when His love is visible in us. Pray that God will love your friend through you.

Seventh and finally, share your faith in Christ. If God has allowed you to be helpful to your friend in their grief, they may wonder, whether they’re non-Christians or Christians, what allows you to be that helpful friend. You can honestly say that it isn't you who have been helpful, that you have prayed over every step you took with them and that God has guided you. You can tell them that you belong to an eternal God Who has destroyed the power of death and that anyone who trustingly follows Jesus Christ has hope beyond the grave. At the right time, after you've lovingly taken the journey of grief with your friend, that will come as very good news.

I love what Proverbs 17:17 tells us: “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity.” Call upon God in Jesus’ name to help you be that friend who loves at all times and so be a sister or brother to those who go through adversity. In this way, we will love God and love our neighbor. Amen

[Blogger Mark Daniels is pastor of Living Water Lutheran Church in Centerville, Ohio. This is the first installment of the church's midweek Lenten series, Tough Questions.]

To weep for the death of anyone or anything...

...in the only world we yet know is only right.

We have loved and been loved here. To grieve the loss of that which is lost is to intrinsically understand, whatever faith we profess or do not profess, that deaths and ends were never meant to come to us in this once-perfect Eden.

The New International Version's translation of Ecclesiastes 3:11 contains this line: "...He has also set eternity in the human heart." We, the people we have loved and known, the people we have never met, and the creation in which we live were all made for eternity. But death and endings have invaded this place, invaded us, through human sin.

So, it's right for us to mourn and sorrow over what is lost, even those of us who are assured that by God's grace through faith in Christ, the One Who died and rose again, we will step beyond the portals of death, step into eternal sunshine, where loss never happens, where every greeting is hello and not goodbye. There, God will dry our tears and call us further in and further up into the eternity for which we were made.

I love C.S. Lewis' portrayal of grief and eternity in a scene from my favorite of his Narnia books.

Grief is a Process

From a letter written by C.S. Lewis after the death of his beloved wife, Joy.

Think That God Doesn't Care?

Think about this.

How to Help a Grieving Friend

How do we help friends who are grieving?

Over the course of the years, I've learned some important basic lessons about this, both from personal experience and from my reading of the Bible.

If you have a friend who is grieving, whether over the death of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss, or a move that has taken them many miles from familiar faces and places, they can use your help. Fortunately, the principles I've discovered can be used in face-to-face conversations, over the telephone, and even, I have learned, in internet instant messaging. So, to help you help your grieving friend, here are seven of those lessons.

First and most importantly, listen to your friend. Frequently, whether it's because of our own discomfort or a penchant for wanting to "fix things," we can go to our grieving friends and shower them with torrents of consoling words. But what grieving people most need is to be listened to. Their pain and grief need to be acknowledged.

In the Old Testament book of Job, a man is aggrieved when he loses first, all his sources of wealth and then, all of his children in a natural disaster. Three friends come to visit Job (pronounced with a long "o"). One scholar has pointed out that the friends do something very wise at first. They let Job "vent," allowing him to give full expression to his agony, his questions, his anger. Then, they make a mistake: They open their mouths. My biggest mistakes in life and in trying to help hurting people, have never come from listening. They've always come from talking.

Second, don't try to talk people out of their grief. Grief is something which, over time, follows a more or less natural course. Sometimes more time and sometimes less is required. It depends on the person, their level of faith, and their particular grief. You can't truncate grief with words.

Some people think that they need to give the aggrieved person a "pep talk." But such talks are really designed more to make the talker feel they've done a good turn than to do any real good for anyone else. A woman's husband died. At the funeral home viewing, a man decided to "cheer her up." He said, "I know you feel bad now. But you'll get over it." That's a true story and it's truly awful.

Thirdly, don't try to explain what you don't understand. When people grieve over their losses, they wonder, as all of us do, why this has happened. The person who wants to help the friend who is asking this question must resist the temptation to answer it. In all honesty, your friend doesn't want to have a rational explanation anyway. They simply want to be able to say, "This isn't fair!"

And it isn't fair. Life often isn't fair. At the end of Job's forty-two chapters, we're left with this answer to the question of why grief befalls us: We live in a world where bad things happen. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that bad things rain on the good and the evil alike. Why that is so, no one living on this planet is wise enough to say. Only God knows the answer to the question of why and you don't need to play God by pretending to have that answer.

Lesson four is this: Let your friend be angry with God. A deeply faithful Christian man whose granddaughter had recently died told me, "Sometimes I get angry with God. I know it's horrible; but it's true." I assured him that what he was feeling wasn't horrible. I reminded him of such people in the Bible as David and Job, who always believed in God, but also got angry with God when dealing with grief or the threat of death. And I told the grieving grandfather, "The fact that you're angry with God proves your faith in God. You would never be angry with someone you didn't think was there."

Most of the time, when we respond to people's anger, no matter its source, with condemnation, it only makes them dig in their heels. God says in Proverbs 15:1, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Letting your friend get angry with God will prevent their anger from becoming an ongoing feature in their life.

Lesson five: Don't avoid talking about your grieving friend's loss. Often, friends fear that if they do so, they'll only make their friends feel sadder. But a grieving friend already is sad and if it seems natural to mention a friend's dead loved one, for example, or if your friend mentions that person, you should be willing to talk about them as well.

A woman once told me, "My friends avoid speaking of my late husband like a plague. What they don't seem to understand is that when they do that, it makes me feel as though they think he was unimportant or that they want to pretend he was never there." Through the years, I have heard that grieving woman's words echoed by other grieving people. You honor your friend when you're willing to discuss with them the people or circumstances they grieve.

Lesson six: Pray for your friend. You should pray that God will bring them comfort, for sure. But you also should pray that God will use you as a conduit for the blessings you want your friend to receive. Whenever I visit people who are dealing with grief, I always ask God to fill me with His Holy Spirit, allowing God's love for my friend to flow through me. Jesus says that the world will know Him when His love is visible in us. Pray that God will love your friend through you.

Finally, if you're a follower of Jesus, your friend will probably eventually want to know what has allowed you to be so helpful to them. You can honestly say that it isn't you who have been helpful, that you have prayed over every step you took with them and that God has guided you. You can tell them that you belong to an eternal God Who has destroyed the power of death and that anyone who trustingly follows Jesus Christ has hope beyond the grave. At the right time, after you've lovingly taken the journey of grief with your friend, that will come as very good news.

[This piece distills two columns I wrote five years ago for The Community Journal, a suburban Cincinnati newspaper. I presented this earlier today at two gatherings, the women's group of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church and the Hocking County Cancer Support Group. This has appeared in various incarnations on the blog.]

Our Former Community in Our Thoughts...

For seventeen years, we lived in suburban Cincinnati, where I pastored the congregation I founded there, Friendship Lutheran Church.

While there, my wife worked in several different schools of the West Clermont Local School District. Our kids graduated from one of the district's high schools. I was involved with the school system, volunteering in one levy/bond issue campaign and chairing another campaign. We count several teachers and administrators among our friends.

In recent years, we've watched one tragedy after another befall the district. In March the string of sadness continued when a long-time administrator, John Abegglen, died suddenly of a heart attack while sitting at his desk.

I wrote about some of these sad events here.

Now, the district and community prepares for the funeral of Matt Maupin, a graduate of the same high school my kids attended and a young man with whom our daughter worked at the local Sam's Club. He was killed by a militia that had earlier kidnapped him. That happened four years ago, but his remains were only recently found.

My thoughts and prayers and those of our family are with Maupin's family and with all our old friends and neighbors in the West Clermont school district as they prepare for the funeral.

May God comfort all who mourn.

I'm praying.

"This is the summer of our mourning."

See here.

Now What?: In the Face of a Terrible Tragedy

[Today, a memorial celebration of the life of Eileen Murphy, the principal of Summerside Elementary School in our community was held. More than one-thousand people were in attendance, filling the Performing Arts Center of Glen Este High School. She was a beloved figure and the 600-children and staff of Summerside were just some of the people wrestling with the suicide of a beloved educator. Many more who are part of our West Clermont Local School District have been affected by this loss.

[The memorial was wonderful, including a moving and funny eulogy by our friend, Barb Dardy; a solo presentation of Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus by our district superintendent, Gary Brooks; and a parent eloquently speaking of his appreciation of Miss Murphy, among other things. Below is a message I shared during the memorial.]

There are things that happen in this life that are so big and so sad and so horrible that we can’t explain them. As you think about the tragic death of a beloved family member, principal, and colleague, it’s natural to ask, “Why has this happened?”

I’m not sure there is an answer to that question.

More than that, I’m not sure that having an answer would help us very much.

I think that the far more important question for all who mourn Eileen Murphy to ask is this: “Now what?”

How do you--how do we all--proceed with the living of our lives knowing that there are things that happen in this life that are so big and so sad and so horrible that we can’t explain them? How do we live knowing that life is good, but life isn’t fair and life doesn't always make sense? Just a few thoughts.

First, and this is especially for the boys and girls: Listen to each other. Be kind to each other. Treat each other with respect. When we know that even this beautiful world full of wonders and laughter can be infected by sad things, we should all make it our goal to treat others with the same kindness and love with which we want them to treat us.

Second, boys and girls, when you have feelings of sadness or anger inside of you, tell a trusted grown-up like a parent, a teacher, a counselor, a pastor, or, for some of you, a Boys and Girls Club adult. When I was a little boy and I got frightened or sad, those bad feelings always got worse if I kept them to myself. But when I told my parents, grandparents, or some other grown-up I trusted, those feelings got smaller or went away. A trusted grown-up can help that happen for you too. And grown-ups, we never grow too old for this advice!

Third: The sixty-something year old woman who, when I was in my early twenties, helped me move from being an atheist to a believer in God used to tell me whenever something was bothering me, “You know, Mark, it’s not something you can’t pray about.” You can talk with God about anything! You can even tell Him when you’re angry with Him. The Bible tells us to cast all our cares on God because He cares for us. He cares for you. So, talk to God. Pray.

Fourth: Live in the assurance that your life matters to God. Every single second of it!

In the New Testament portion of the Bible, you can read the letters of a man named Paul. Once a hardboiled enemy of Christian faith, he became a follower of Christ and suffered beatings, imprisonment, shipwrecks, and all sorts of abuse because of his faith. He had every reason to ask, “Why?” But Paul kept following Christ.

He did this because he remembered, as many of us will do in just a few days, that Christ gave up His life on Good Friday and then rose to give new life to all who believe in Him on Easter Sunday.

Paul knew that no matter what happened, he was still loved. You should know that too. Toward the end of his life, Paul wrote some words to the band of Christians living in Rome that comfort me whenever I face the uncertainties and pain of life. I hope they will help you today too:

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As you face a loss so big and so sad and so horrible that you can’t explain it, I hope you’ll remember that God is bigger than all our hurts and that today and every day, His arms are opened wide to you.

Little Willow

This beautiful song, Little Willow, was written by Paul McCartney for the children of Ringo Starr and his first wife, Maureen, after Maureen succumbed to cancer. It's a poignant song and the video matches that mood perfectly. The latter, in fact, mirrors the experiences of McCartney, first in the death of his mother and then of his first wife, Linda. Both were victims of breast cancer.

I was drawn to this song today in light of this event.



Of course, as a Christian, important as the support of friends and family is in times of grief, my ultimate hope is in Jesus Christ, Who has unequivocally conquered death for all who believe in Him. But it's also true that the loving encouragement of others can be the very medicine for our souls that God wants to provide to us to remind us of hope beyond the grave. I believe that we wouldn't find death so difficult accept were it not for the fact that deep in our DNA, we know that we have been made for more. Thank God that in Christ, our hope for eternity isn't in vain!

Charlie Lehardy Talks About How God Comforts Those Who Mourn

He writes:

Jesus doesn't excuse pain and suffering. Nowhere does he attempt a theological justification for death. Death and suffering exist; God is good. The paradox that confounds us is left unexplained.

What Jesus does say is that when we mourn, when we suffer, God will stand beside us. In our pain, God will embrace us.

Please do read the whole thing!

Also see here.