Friday, December 15, 2017

How God uses Grief to Teach us Hope

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

In grief there is unprecedented and unparalleled poverty of spirit. Sadness like no other. A place of soul where all is foreign. Where all anchors fail and where trust is tested and torn. Sight of hope has vanished; felt realities of hope are vanquished.
In grief, hope is a problem.
Journeying through the topography of loss is a journey of change. The only inevitable way through is via acceptance to acceptance. The journey is hazardous. The process is painful. But believe upon a purpose, because this journey is full of meaning. We only realise it on the other side looking back.
Thankfully we have hope.
True hope can only be birthed from traversing through a dark place. For, true hope cannot come from ourselves. We receive it as a gift in pain. It is given to us by a gracious God who reveals to us that He is real. Perhaps it was only when we plummeted that we were desperate enough to need God enough to experience Him.
And then we break through into a faith relatively few experience. It does not make us better than others, nor more enlightened. It makes us suppler to compassion and empathy. We covet less.
And still there is another journey to be taken — that is to empathise and be compassionate not only with those who are suffering as we have suffered, but to become patient with those who truly have no idea. This journey proves just as hard to navigate. But we take heart out of this fact: what we learn through grieving our losses, in the process of receiving God’s healing grace, through applying a learned ruthlessness in being courageously honest each step, is we can overcome anything.

Grief seems initially a sea of despair, but through the redemption of recovery, God docks us in a harbour called Hope.

No comments:

Post a Comment