Good Grief!
Week three - “Grateful and Grieving”
Lamentations 3:19-24
What could possibly be good about grief?
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. (Matthew 5:4) —Jesus
When we lose our ability to lament, we aren’t left with unadulterated joy, but instead with stoicism and cynicism. —Tish Warren Harrison
Most Americans have an inherited tendency to resist grief. It’s in our national DNA; it’s the water we swim in. The United States tends toward optimism and forward progress, busyness and productivity. Getting on with it. We’re taught in subtle ways that ‘there is no time for grief.’ …If we do not make time for grief, it will not simply disappear. Grief is stubborn. It will make itself heard or we will die trying to silence it. If we don’t face it directly it comes out sideways, in ways that aren’t always recognizable as grief: explosive anger, uncontrollable anxiety, compulsive shallowness, brooding bitterness, unchecked addiction. Grief is a ghost that can’t be put to rest until its purpose has been fulfilled. (Prayer in the Night) —Tish Warren Harrison
We think of grief as bad; or at best, a task to be completed. But what if our most sincere
19 I remember my affliction and my wandering,the bitterness and the gall.
20 I well remember them, and my soul is downcast within me.
21 Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope:
22 Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
23 They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
24 I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.” —Lamentations 3:19-24
Our faith doesn’t bypass
Eucharisteo - to be
Communion - sorrow and brokenness (body and blood) as a means of thanksgiving
*mysterious, complex, defies comparison
I’ve come to also see grief as part of the everyday experience of being human in a world that is both good and cruel. —Tish Warren Harrison