No matter what the circumstances, death shakes us to the core. It seems so wrong - and it is! We long for comfort, but we don't know where to look. Can God really help when we are overwhelmed with grief? With compassion and biblical wisdom, Paul David Tripp shows us how to think and what to do when death enters our door. He reminds us that we have a Savior who knows our sorrows, hears our cries, and promises to one day wipe away all tears. Hope and healing come from our relationship with Jesus, the One who promises to walk all the way through the valley of the shadow of death with us.
The turmoil women experience after having an abortion is sometimes called "post-abortion syndrome." But you don't need a technical term to describe what you are feeling. The guilt, regret, depression, and grief are the honest struggles of a woman who's had an abortion and takes to heart what happened.
In these Grief Diary blogs, I’ve spoken about my experience of grieving the death of my father. Writing about it has been good for me. Thank you for joining in. This will be my final post in the series and I wish to make one last point: the experience of grief is extremely valuable. That may sound strange, let me explain.
How Grief has Value First, the sadness over losing a person means that person was important to you. When a void is felt and the emptiness hurts, it is proof that this life had impact. In a quiet, private way, the sadness I feel over losing my dad is honoring him.
A good friend of mine asked, “How are you doing in recovering from your father’s death?” Which made me wonder. Recover. Is that what I’m trying to do?
It certainly is a common expression, and it’s even the goal set forth by several groups that specialize in grief. These groups offer to steer you through a course of activities to help you “recover.”
I stopped in my tracks, my eyes glazed over, and I commenced to have a meltdown, right there in the produce aisle. It was the sight of the artichokes that did it.
I’ve been flying a lot lately, back and forth from New England to Florida where my mom is. My dad died unexpectedly a couple months ago. There are a lot of details to attend to after someone dies.
Take a random sample of Christians. Ask them a simple question: What was most helpful to you when you were going through trouble? This is what you will hear.
The #1 answer: people. People are the cause of most trouble; people are the salve for most trouble. A letter, a visit and then another visit, kind and understanding words, or a consistent presence: sitting next to you in church, dropping off a small gift, having a meal together, helping with chores around the house, reading to you, offering Scripture that was helpful to them in their trouble, downloading worship music for you. The list is endless. Love can be very creative in the way it comforts those who are hurting.
And please don’t think that the encouragement of others is merely a random act of kindness. All this mobilized love, of course, is from the Spirit who often gives gifts anonymously (Isaiah 45:1-5). The Suffering Servant has a soft spot for those who suffer. As a result, believers and unbelievers alike will usually find some comfort in the words and deeds of another person.
I am here in wintery Vermont, looking over an unbelievably beautiful landscape. The sun is just coming up, starting to make the snow twinkle as it does on the coldest of days. The snow is very deep, perfectly white and glistening smooth, completely covering the hilly terrain around our house. There are no tracks at all. The storm ended during the night, but no animals or people have yet to venture out.
It reminds me of a time years ago when our kids were heading to school. They used to walk through the woods for almost a quarter mile to get to the bus stop. (Yes, growing up in Vermont can, at times, be very idyllic.) On one particularly snowy morning I asked them if they’d be all right getting to the bus. My ten year-old said, “Of course we’ll be fine, we can still see where the path is.” The path through the woods was originally made by deer, who, for many decades had nibbled away the branches and packed the ground on their way to the stream that runs along the old dirt road where the school bus now picks up kids. It was true, even when fresh snow covered the ground, you could still tell where the path was.
As we enter the season of thanksgiving, we thought you might like to read this email that Ed Welch sent to CCEF colleagues after his mother passed away in September. Her blessings to him will leave you feeling blessed as well.
