Learning, and Growing, from a Tragedy:

Senator Creigh Deeds is a local lawyer and politician.  He has invested his life in the area where I'm privileged to live.  Over the past few days an incredible tragedy that struck his family has received national attention.  I've included some links to news articles at the end of this STTA.  The short version of what happened is that Creigh's son, Gus, suffering from mental illness, attacked his father with a knife, and after inflicting life-threatening wounds, killed himself with a gun.  That kind of grief on grief would cause many to crawl into a hole.  State Senator Deeds not only returned to his post in the Virginia legislature, but has mounted a campaign to address some of the short-comings in the way our society, particularly our governmental agencies address mental health problems.

  

What is one to do with the tragedy that comes into life lived in this sin-cursed world?  

  

The Apostle Paul talks to the point in 2 Corinthians 1.

  

   "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort,who comforts us in all our affliction so that we will be able to comfort those who are in any affliction with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ." (2 Corinthians 1:3-5, NASB95)  

 

Who wants to sign up for such ministry?   

I can see hands not going up all over the place.  Mine are in my pockets.  As I look back over forty years of small church pastoring, I see a lot of those who ought to be "able to comfort those who are in any affliction."  As is always the case, ability does not necessarily equal performance.  I've observed some who became bitter, and others who became marvelous ministers of God's grace.  

The kind of grief the Deeds family is dealing with is off the chart.  Though few of us will be called on to deal with this kind of head-line tragedy, and most of us lack positions of power and prominence, still each of us are called on to work to a place in our pain where it becomes a platform from which we can reach out to others who hurt.

 

I didn't sign up.  It's just the way it is.

  

It's STTA.  

 

http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/26/politics/creigh-deeds-attack/ 

 

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/creigh-deeds-on-mental-health-legislation-weve-got-some-hard-work-to-do/ 

 

http://www.roanoke.com/news/politics/article_b41917ea-8769-11e3-a5d1-001a4bcf6878.html 

Grieving:

"During such tragedies, daily village life comes to a halt while everyone sits and mourns together."

So wrote a friend of mine who works at an orphanage/school in the hinterland of Nigeria.  The tragedy she speaks of is the death of three young boys, who had apparently locked themselves in a closed car and died in the heat.  

I participated in a funeral recently.  My friend was buried in a small family cemetery, that looks exactly like a family burial place should look.  Neighbors had come and dug the grave by hand.  Because I was riding with one of the staff from the funeral home, I was present when the guys gathered again, and with good-natured ribbing and joking--that wasn't at all irreverent, if you understand the culture--filled the hole and covered the grave with the sod they had removed a few days before.

In my community it is still common for folk to pull to the edge of the road and stop when a funeral procession goes by.  It is silent testament to the reality John Donne wrote of when he counselled those who hear the village bell announcing someone's death, "never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."  

When we gather to grieve, even if it is just for a moment as we pull our car to the side of the road, or as we take a moment to sign the register at the funeral home, it is an entry into the grief of another and a reminder of our own mortality.  One cannot easily claim earthly immortality while shoveling dirt into a hole that contains the body of a friend and neighbor.  

Not to put urban-ites down--I'm sure they have their own rituals--but I have been in funeral processions that passed through large cities.  We had to struggle, even with the help of police on motorcycles, to keep the cortege together.  Too many people, in too big a hurry to get to where they were going, not realizing where they are really headed.

Lord deliver us.  May we, like these simple African villagers, acknowledge the grief of another and our own mortality.

 It's STTA. 

Find out about the message that will defeat the ravages of sin and death here. 

You will find some ideas for having more meaningful devotions in the New Year here.

What Did He Die From?

What he die from?

It's a common question, often asked at funeral homes or when news of someone's passing comes.  We have gotten more specific in recent years, but still a common answer is the generality, "He died of natural causes."  What we mean by that is, it wasn't an accident or foul play that took the person's life.  He died of some disease, or the deterioration brought on by age.  In a sense nothing is more natural than dying.  It is one of the few universals in life.  

Looking beyond the realm of our experience, however, death is shown to be "dreadfully unnatural."  So says Michael Horton.*  He points out that, "No one really dies of natural causes, but of the most horrific and unnatural cause."  Contrary to what some people who haven't really read the Bible think, God's word gives a very realistic view of death.  It is an enemy.  It entered the world because of sin.  (Romans 5:12)  It is through fear of death that Satan holds the world in bondage.  (Hebrews 2:14-15)  Death was not a part of the world when it was fresh from God's creation and it won't be again when God renews all things.  In the mean time, death is a large part of the reason that we, and indeed all creation with us,groans and travails in this world of mortality.  

Micheal Horton goes on to say about death:  "We die because we have rebelled against our creator, collectively and individually.  So in order for God to raise us bodily from the dead, the judicial sentence has to be removed."*

While the Bible speaks realistically about death it also speaks hopefully.  There is life beyond the grave, and purposeful life in the here and now.  

 It's STTA. 

Find out about a hope that death can't kill, here.

You will find some ideas for having more meaningful devotions in the New Year here.

*Michael Horton, These Last Days, p 64-65