Having problems with message search?
Hi Group,
I’m concluding a book A Year Of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion. I’ll write a book review soon, but I want to make a couple of comments I’ve gleaned from the spirit or reading this book and my recent readings in Deuteronomy and I Peter in the Bible.
Our weakened state in this world is the most profound place to be, but we’re usually feeling so overwhelmed that we can’t recognize it.
That is, when we have nothing in ourselves that we can really trust in, we must trust in God. Grief shows us that many of the things we set up in our life as truth and trust are neither. In grief, we find out that truths we held (Dad and Mom will keep me well and everything will be alright or I trust this job/person/situation is going to make me happy), are tenuous at best and sometimes not true/trustworthy at all.
In Deut. 8, God reminds the wanderers (wow, doesn’t that sound like a grief term?) to keep every command so that they could increase and enter the land. In verse 2, it says, “Remember how the
Lord your God led you all the way in the desert these forty years, to humble you and to test you in order to know what was in your heart, whether or not you would keep his commands.”
It goes on to say how they were hungry and he fed them (with manna) to teach them that humanity does not live on bread alone, but on every word (promise) that comes out of the mouth of God. Now where have we heard that before? Yes, at Christ’s temptation when Satan tried to get him to wrongfully use his power and turn stones to bread. Jesus didn’t bite (pun intended).
I
think grief is exactly like the wanderers. It’s a weakened state where we’ve found out that there is nothing in this life we can hold assuredly. Grief teaches that God and God alone is sufficient for the journey, sufficient for the day, sufficient for the moment.
In I Peter, we see the dispersed saints who have nowhere truly to call their home. They’re called strangers and aliens and they’re learning that trust is not of this world, but in God’s Word and promises.
A thing that stands out to me reading Didion’s book is that we all have these
divergent life paths, but when we lose a loved one, really, we’re all reduced to the same place. Grief. And it’s a reduction that no one could have ever planned or prepared for.
This site is exactly for this purpose. That no one has to journey alone in the hell-on-earth that is grief. We’re fellow wanderers and our hope is in God and God alone. We’ve found out there’s not a lot else to truly hold on to, but when we go through the valley together, with nothing to hold on to except God, we find strength and encouragement to spur one another on.
God be
with you this day and give you peace.
John
How low will we go? Check out Yahoo! Messenger’s low PC-to-Phone call rates.
Online Now 
Send Email