Lamenting Forward
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There are two prevailing feelings currently: fear and anger. Neither one is productive over time. In the end, they can destroy a person emotionally and spiritually.
Ezekiel ate words of lament, mourning, and woe. In the vision the edible scroll tastes a sweet as honey. At the same time, there was no joy in the words themselves.
One of the biggest lessons that the current atmosphere can teach us is that we need to mourn what we have lost. We are even still in the midst of losing our perception of culture(s), country, and even church. We fight the loss.
We don’t want to lose all that we hold dear. At the same time, there is another feeling that is harder to quantify… God is doing something new. We don’t know what that new is, which causes us to be even more emotionally reactive.
God can (and does) handle our anger and fear. God is greater than that. We, though, need to lament, grieve and mourn.
When we lose a loved one, we miss them. We grieve. We mourn. We understand that it is not only acceptable, it is also healthy. We also have to—as hard as it is—find a way to move forward.
That is currently the way many things are right now. One of the great difficulties is choose what to mourn and move past, and what to struggle for. As the situation around COVID continues, we will continue to have to work and walk together to find a way forward.
We all have to be grace-filled as people struggle with their grief masked in fear and anger. Only the God of hope can turn the anger and fear into a drive to move forward in faithfulness. Let us all be people of hope.
—prayer—
Heavenly Father, guide us to be people of hope, not just any hope, but the hope of the crucified and risen Son. Amen.
—questions—
1) What is one thing you are angry about right now? How about fearful? What about grieving?
2) If you were to rank each of these in order, what would they be, and why?
3) Which of these has the greatest effect upon your Christian walk? How so?