Ahhh, the Power of Two Letters

Is grieving Godly?  How do we best transition from mourning to morning?  These are very pertinent questions since we are guaranteed to experience increasingly all kinds loss and death as our world transitions to the coming new age – The Millennium of Christ’s rule on earth.

Since they are used interchangeably, I used to believe grieving and mourning refer to each other.

Grief/ Grieving: keen mental suffering or distress over affliction or loss; sharp sorrow; painful regret; to feel grief, great sorrow; to distress mentally

Mourn/Mourning: to feel or express sorrow of grief

Current reflections of experts suggest these may be different, and may manifest in an unpredictable sequence.  One article suggests grief is the initial shock and other factors related to a loss, while mourning is the longer-term process that follows as we attempt to come to terms with our loss, rearrange our lives, and extract from the loss those aspects that are helpful to our healing.  (http://griefandmourning.com/grief-and-mourning-distinguishe)   

While recognizing everything that may be popular is not necessarily accurate or true, here are some popular scriptural perspectives on grieving and mourning:

Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4: “There is a time for everything under the sun”, so why not grief?  This verse (and possibly the entire book of Ecclesiastes) may well be misinterpreted on many fronts, as Solomon likely wrote it on the heels of his extended, fleshly departure from his faith.  Following the logic of his model, must there also be a time to dishonor God, since there is ‘a time for everything'?!  Heck no! The Bible is filled with good, wholesome lessons, even from fools, from which we are to extract and learn from the truth hidden therein, not to repeat what the fool did simply 'because it's in the Bible.'  I'm sure you agree.

Romans 12:15:  "Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep or mourn with those who mourn. Jesus wept, and so should we.” Again, any verse can be taken out of its context. Did Jesus and His disciples go mourn with the fellow who had to bury his dead father and therefore, could not follow Him?  Heck no!  We are to weep and mourn over sin within, and the fallen-ness of our world, as Jesus wept over Jerusalem. Using this verse as a blanket policy (doctrine) to weep and mourn over the cares of this world is erroneous.  We too quickly take statements from Paul out of their contexts (the chapter, book, and culture in which they were written), and try to make a broad blanket policy (doctrine) out of it, then judge others based on our error, even when it clearly conflicts with the broad, integrated interpretation of the 'whole counsel of God', including His broadly expressed will and revealed nature.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4 and 1 Thessalonians 4:13:  These verses link grief to hopelessness, which is an interesting link worth pondering. Since we live in a fallen world, and the rot of sin is all around us, we really should not be shocked (in grief) to encounter the fruits of sinful living in the world, in general, or in our personal world. We are not to revert to a misinterpretation of Romans 12:15, and grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope. Rather, we are admonished to focus on and keep alive our hope in Christ, hope for a better world to come -- the greatest hope that has ever touched this planet. Managed properly, our grief is to become a source of strength for others who grieve and mourn, not by groveling with them in their hopelessness, but by sharing with them the solid rock of our personal hope. They will be comforted as they witness God’s comforting work in the grief we personally encounter.

Philippians 4:8 tells us on what to think and meditate in order to keep alive our hope in Christ. Protracted grief and deep-seated mourning, however, could possibly be the fruit of not obeying this instruction, but rather thinking and meditating on the center letter of the word: grief.  A focus on what I have lost, how I am impacted, and what am I to do now -- may well be the fertilizer of grief and mourning that distracts our focus away from our hope in Christ, to the deceptive cares of this temporal world.

Isaiah 53:3 is another verse that is often taken out of its context.  The thinking is since Christ, our savior, grieved and was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief/suffering", therefore we Christians should grieve also. The fallacy of this logic is reflective of Thomas’ response when Jesus advised His disciples, “Lazarus is dead.” Thomas said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.”  (John 11: 14-16).  This logic also misses the whole counsel of God, as affirmed in the verse that is right next-door. Isaiah 53:4 reveals the reason Christ was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief/suffering, is that He did it on our behalf, to take on Himself the sin and its punishment as God’s sacrifice so we can be FREE to walk in faith and faithfulness towards God. There are countless examples in which Scripture is misinterpreted simply by our failure to read the neighboring verses.

We are admonished to ‘live by faith’ four times in The Bible, which is replete with good and bad examples that demonstrate the results of those who have done this both successfully and unsuccessfully.  Interpreted in the vernacular, God’s iterative message to us is:

Please Me.

LIVE BY FAITH!!!!

Here’s how to, and here’s how not to.

Signed: God

So when it comes to applying this message to the topic of grief and mourning, the operative question must be, “How can I glorify and please God as I transit this very temporary dark cloud of grief and mourning?”  I believe the root answer must be learning to recognize, respect, reverence and respond to what Jesus did for us in this area:

Jesus, You bore my all my grief.

Anything You bore for me is no longer mine to bear,

otherwise it was useless for You to bear it.

By faith, I roll this unbearable grief onto You

In You, I have victory over the spirit of grief.

By faith, my mourning has now become…
my new MORNING!

Now what do you think would be God’s reaction to this?!  As you reflect on your answer, consider this:

Removing ‘U’ (you) from MOURNING,

and your focus from the center of GRIEF,

opens the door to a new MORNING