Steven Curtis Chapman and Grieving

Pray for Steven Curtis Chapman and his family. If you haven't already heard the tragic news about this Christian singer and his family, his 5 year-old adopted daughter from China was run over in her driveway by her older brother last Wednesday. It was an accident. He didn't see her. I read that the funeral was today.

Death is such an unimaginable part of life. For the longest time, I thought that -- for anyone who believes in Heaven -- the blow of death must somehow be softened. And I still believe that believing that the person lost is with God -- and that we'll see them again -- must somehow make continuing to live more possible. But, sometimes, I think that those of us who claim faith in Christ rush so quickly to hope that we fail to linger in the reality of loss. Like somehow feeling true despair, unanswerable despair, angry despair ... demonstrates a lack of faith. I read a very significant and perspective-shifting book recently, Lament for a Son, written by Nicholas Wolterstorff. Mr. Wolterstorff lost his 25 year-old son to a mountain-climbing accident, and he wrote the book as a personal journey of grieving. He never imagined the book would impact others, as he wrote it for himself, and he thought it too personal to be applicable. Years later, he got talked into publishing it, and he describes in the forward how blown away he was by the responses he got. Countless numbers of people thanked him for giving words to their own losses ... it seems that apart from the unique details that surround each individual being, the experience of loss is quite universal.

Anyway, in the book he describes what little comfort he received from well-meaning comments like, "Your son is in a much better place." Or "You'll see him down the road." He described the sting of death that is immediate and in your face. And although one can know they will meet up with their loved one after life, that doesn't really ease the sting of the moment. He talked about the nature of death, how it wasn't in God's original plan, how it's NOT God's best for our life. He talked about the story in which Jesus wept after Lazarus died, EVEN THOUGH he would go on to raise Lazarus from death. He offered a perspective on grief in which God mourns WITH us. To feel rage, sorrow, despair, after a loss is not only OK, but important ... because death was not in the original design of things. It is not natural. It is not really OK.

I haven't lost anyone to death recently. But I do mourn other losses, big and small. And with so much devastation recently in different parts of the world, it seems appropriate to take a second look at death and grieving.

An excerpt:

"When death is seen rather as the slicing off of what God declared to be, and what all of us feel to be, of great worth, then death is - well, not friend, but enemy. Though I shall indeed recall that death is being overcome, my grief is that death still stalks this world...How is faith to endure, Oh God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song -- all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain yourself. We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer, we catch sight of God Himself, scraped and torn. Through our tears, we see the tears of God. A new and more disturbing question now arises: Why do you permit yourself to suffer, O God? If the death of the devout costs you dear, why do you permit it? Why do you not grasp joy?""