Series: Inspired Word of God
Colossians 3:16 ESV
Romans 8:26 ESV
I have been very (very) blessed in my life to have good mentors and wise comrades who have walked with me on this journey we call life.
As a child and young adult I had my da (I also had my Mom but she was the do-er she seldom sat down and she was always busy working). My da was a planner and a thinker. Every chance he could get, he was studying scripture or planning a project. He made me think things through.
Long after he was gone my Mom told me he said he was going to die when he was a sixty. He turned sixty in April and he passed over the bridge in early November. Even though I was an adult who had children of my own I missed him terribly.
As a grieving child I had a host of people who walked with me, helping me understand how grief impacts us. The year he died I had just turned 34 years old. I lived several hours away from my hometown (Kansas City) and I lived near a group of older adults who were in their seventies and eighties who had lost parents (and children). They understood grief and they taught me how to grieve.
No one told me to ‘get over it’. Instead they taught me to face my grief. They told me to cry. They assured me the way to grieve and pray through my grief was by facing it head on.
Years after when I had an opportunity I worked with a grief group I became a certified grief counselor. While my dear older friends taught me how to grieve, the group taught me why we grieve and how to help others when they are grieving.
Colossians 3:16 tells us, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.”
My group taught me and they admonished me ever so gently when they noticed I was running away from my grief.
The Koine Greek word for “let dwell” in Colossians 3:16 is enoikeitō and it means ‘richly dwell within’. During the years following my loss my group of older ‘saints’ helped remind me to embrace Christ in me. I learned Jesus is ever so close and always feeling what I feel. They were all at least forty years my senior and I relied on their experience and wisdom.
Also in Colossians 3:16 the Greek word for “admonishing” is nouthetountes and it means ‘teaching and warning’.
They taught me how to effectively face my sorrow.
They loved me enough to warn me about what happens when we run from grief.
See…you can run but you cannot hide from grief.
If you stuff it down that doesn’t lessen the grief. Stuffing it down only makes it possible for us to allow grief to manifest itself in other ways.
Until we face our grief and cry it out it still remains deeply embedded within us.
When we rely on Christ within us to help us with our sorrow, Jesus sits with us.
Jesus holds us.
God protects us during that time. It’s as if it’s considered a Holy time when we are to set ourselves apart from the busi-ness of life.
We remember.
We allow Christ to dwell in us richly. We don’t necessarily do that because we want it or because we planned it.
We do it because we have lost a small (or in some cases a large) piece of ourselves. We realize part of us has died. Even though we will see them again we know it will not be exactly the same.
As we grieve we let Christ dwell in the empty space of the hole that remains and Christ weaves a beautiful tapestry in us that will continue to remind us of the love and the experiences we had with the person we lost.
In a sense we are inspired. I think that’s because we groan with the Spirit. In Romans 8:26
Paul wrote, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.”
Holy God hurts with us. Even though God knows how the story ends we hurt and so God in us hurts.
It’s the cycle of life.
Those we love come stand with us. We sing psalms and hymns and we hold each other ever so close.
We are reminded that life is precious and God is good.
We are thankful for the life we’ve known.
In that Holy wretched moment we know it’s God in us that holds us together.
…and we are grateful.
Spiritual Practice: Christ in You
Let Christ in you inspired you.
In God, Deborah