Life in the Valley

Friday, March 14, 2008
Read 2 Samuel 1:1 through 4:12.

(1:26) "I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; you have been very pleasant to me. Your love to me was more wonderful than the love of women." (NASB)

I doubt it's the poll question you might have expected. "Why is Michael asking us about facing grief? How could that possibly help me spiritually this week?" For one thing, we all experience grief. It's just a matter of when and why. Secondly, it helps me to know that others struggle over similar aspects of grief that I do. I'll just tell you that the hardest part of facing grief for me is the initial sting in what has happened. For some reason I tend to respond to God ministering in my life better than others in the coping relationships and remembrances of the future, but I'm very prone to feel like a "deer in headlights" in the moment grief appears. Knowing that others struggle as I do actually helps me.

But our relevance in that question this week comes in following David's life. Through 2 Samuel you'll see him start a portion of his life doing much grieving. Here we see it over the passings of Saul, Jonathan, and Abner. Jonathan's death, of course, struck David hardest of all. It must have felt as if he'd lost a part of him, and we can relate to that. Pay attention and you'll see God doing much shaping of him in valleys where the shadows of death loom ever present.

I'd ask you to post a bit if you would about what your grief feels like. In reading your remarks we'll get a better grip on what David was feeling. Some of our readers aren't comfortable posters just yet, but let me ask you to try, and at the very least to commune with the Lord today about how you grieve. When we grieve we don't want to do so "as do the rest who have no hope" (1 Thessalonians 4:13), for Christ is our hope. But we still need to grieve. How you reflect in this moment will help.

There is no despair so absolute as that which comes with the first moments of our first sorrow, when we have not yet known what it is to have suffered and be healed, to have despaired and recovered hope.
George Eliot