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Building Wisdom in the House of Mourning |
Mitchell Stevens
The funeral parlor was still nearly empty, but being a rather distanced acquaintance, after paying my respects I moved to sit in the back row of what I knew would be a very full service for a beloved sister in Christ. I took my seat next to a couple—dear friends of mine—who had their grade-schooler, toddler, and infant nestled between them. It struck me as unusual that they would go to the trouble to have the kids with them. I asked if the toddler had any understanding of what was going on (the family had been close to the deceased). His mother told me she had tried in the very simplest of terms to explain to him that Ms. Betty had died. She said he thought about that for awhile, then responded by asking her, “But when will God make her not dead?” The boy obviously couldn’t understand everything about death, but how comforting that when he was confronted with something that was sad, he knew that God had the power to change it. What a difficult thing it must be to teach a small child about disappointment and the loss of life! But God bless those parents for teaching it! In taking their children to the house of mourning, they are building a solid foundation for faith—training them up in the way they ought to go (Proverbs 22:6). That includes introducing them to grief. Show your children, as my friends did, the place of mourning. Let them see you grieve. And when loss inevitably invades their world—the dead or missing pet, the broken toy, the moving family—help them work through the grief rather than ignoring it and pushing it away or dealing with it in a selfish, destructive way. That doesn’t mean always providing answers for them to all of life’s difficulties. Rather, help them realize that all too often we don’t have the solution. But we can trust that God does. Having patience with unanswered questions is the righteous man’s lifelong struggle. It is a difficulty rooted in the knowledge that God controls everything. If something has happened, He has allowed it to happen—even bad things. The solution lies with the truth of God’s absolute justice. The struggle lies in having to look beyond our finite perspective—we cannot know all things, nor see all outcomes. But God has given us a glimpse into eternity. He has even shared with us the perspective of those who have already passed on, those who were the direct victims of pain and injustice, those for whom many grieved. And from those souls, we learn how to frame the problem of seeking resolution to grief. It is not for us to ask God “Why…?” or “Will you…?,” but “When, O Lord?” (Revelation 6:10). There will be a reckoning. So, we must have faith. And a
well-established faith is not built on a health and wealth concept of
obedience to God—a faith built on such is bound to fail with the first major
disappointment. Rather, a solid faith is built on
the person of God and the scope of eternity. This life is not all there is.
There is a future hope beyond it. There is a place beyond this life “where
you are all going” (Ecclesiastes We don’t know. But He will (1
Corinthians
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DIRECT BIBLE QUESTIONS TO: Mitchell Stevens, acts2216@midsouth.rr.com