Some images are so vivid. I can remember a day when I was about 6 or 7. I headed to my friend’s house nearby, probably running. There was a vacant lot between my house and hers. I started across the vacant lot and quickly realized that it was like a pit of quick sand from recent rain. I sank down into the mud to a level about mid-shin high and lost both tennis shoes as I struggled to extricate myself from the muck.
Thankfully I also know the Resurrected One and, as Scripture says, we do not have to grieve like those who do not know Christ. Still, we do grieve, and are comforted by the God Who Cares. Life does win:
What a week. A childhood friend dropping dead in Walmart. Two different friends’ diagnosis of particularly vicious cancers. Desperate prayer requests coming in from others I love for various heart breaking reasons. And t…hen the gut wrenching call from one close to me sobbing out the news of the unexpected loss of her son. 24 years old and he didn’t wake up.
I fell on the floor.
Grief will do that.
Yet as crazy as it sounds, as I write that, I am smiling. Because I did not and will not stay down. Because though death will knock me down, I belong to the Resurrected One who knocked death down. Dealt it a death blow as it were.
Still I grieve. And in my sorrow, my tears mingle with my God’s. As the salty waters flow the thick mud of grief is thinned. Life giving water overwhelms the weighty slough and though I am mired in muck, I will not be remain mired forever.
Inextinguishable. Undefeatable. Victorious. That’s what we are in Christ. Jesus led the way. And though the Way includes sorrow, suffering and grief, none of them get the final say.
Life does. Life has. Life will.” Stasi Eldredge