REVIEW of The God of All Comfort: THE LAMENT
Whether you have been going through The God of All Comfort with us from the beginning or joined us somewhere along the way, there is great value in review. If you have friends in fresh pain, invite them to join in — if not as participants, as readers. We’ll spend a few weeks in review.
Two questions prevail in the midst of suffering. “Why did this happen?” And, “How can I possibly get through this?” For the most part, The God of All Comfort addresses the second. You are in enormous pain. How will you make it?
We began with learning how to lament, as God gives us permission to do. This drawing by Andrew Dunn illustrates the grief we feel, the darkness and birds of prey around us, yet also the promise of rising hope. You can make it through the river of grief, and the lament is the tool God gives you to help you.
The most important thing to remember is that Satan wants you to back up from God, who is your only hope. The lament helps you not to back up.
1. Articulate what you have learned about the value of the lament, either from The God of All Comfort or the psalms themselves.
2. Do you remember the most common metaphor the psalmist uses for how he feels? (If not, you can find it in Psalm 18:4-5; Psalm 42:7 and in many of the hymns we have studied. Our closing hymn, What Wondrous Love, has it as well.) How does the fact that God understands this feeling help you?
3. A lament classically has three parts — the lament, the turn, and the remembrance of God’s character. Give an example from the psalms, or even from your own prayer journal.
4. There are also times when there is no turn, as in Heman’s Cry of Darkness in Psalm 88. How does he close his psalm? What does it mean to you that we can be free to be this honest with God?
5. How did Jesus lament on the cross?
6 Comment on a lamenting song like Blessed Be Thy Name or Come Lift Up Your Sorrows or one we’ve studied.
7. Are you incorporating the lament more into your prayer life? If so, how?
It is winter now, but spring will come
Please read the following, and then answer the questions at the bottom over the next four days.
Thursday, December 16
Two months after Steve’s death
Annie feels like her life is “over”—and sometimes I do too. I understand those widows in pagan places who climb up on the funeral pyre and are burned with their husbands’ bodies. When I told Steve I wanted to go with him, he shook his head, “No, no—you must go on—the children, the people you touch. Go on because I can’t.”
I know, deep in my soul, that our lives are not our own. You have left us here for a reason. Yet I look out at the frozen ground, covered with snow, and think, “That’s how I feel.”
I told Liz Curtis Higgs (an author and friend) that’s how I felt. She e-mailed back: “Good, Beloved. He will slowly melt your ‘frozenness.’ And it is, after all, winter now. Beneath the frozen ground, new life is preparing to burst forth come spring. I feel certain that’s what will happen with you as well.”
In Narnia, the land that C. S. Lewis created, it was always winter and never Christmas—that is, until Aslan appeared. Then the ice began to thaw, yellow crocuses began to poke their heads up through the snow, and the snow began to fall in great clumps from the trees and melt into the ground. Aslan’s enemy, the White Witch, who traveled by sleigh, was stopped in her tracks.
“This is no thaw,” said the dwarf, suddenly stopping. “This is Spring. What are we to do? Your winter has been destroyed, I tell you! This is Aslan’s doing.”
How can we get through the frozen tundra of grief to spring?
Only one way. Aslan—Jesus—must come.
And He will. He hears the groaning of His people and His heart is moved. He cares, more than a mother cares for her fretful baby, and He has the truth to calm our fretful souls.
QUESTIONS:
1. Comments or reflections on the above reading?
2. Find evidence in Scripture, either from historical incidents, or from the psalms, that God hears the cries of His people and cares. (You can do a word hunt by going to Biblegateway.com and typing in words like cries, groanings, sorrows — and see what you find.) Write down the phrases that touch your heart.
3. Often when you are in the midst of a spiritual winter, as many of you are, you cannot imagine that spring will come — that Aslan will come. What I want you to do is look back to a different winter, when spring did come, when Jesus did come, and write down what you remember.
4. Memorize the first verse of Be Still My Soul and share your reflections on it.
It’s in the back of The God of All Comfort or you can google it.
5. For Narnia fans, share a comforting word picture of Aslan.
6. Meditate on Psalm 30. Taste it. Savor it. When a verse leaps out at you, The Spirit is speaking. Go slower. Savor. Memorize. Then (and only then) tell us what you see.
Dee’s new book, The God of All Comfort, is out!
Dear Sisters,
I’d be so thankful if you would pray as my book is available as of today. Never has a book
been so close to my heart and I am so praying God will use it mightily to comfort those in any kind of pain. The following video tells a little bit about the book.
Would you pray for it to touch hearts? Either silently, or writing your prayers here?
Thank you so very much.
Dee
How have friends helped you in times of grief?
On Midday Connection this week I’m going to look at Naomi, particularly at the time she was overcome with grief. When I was overcome with grief I wrote this article for Focus on the Family:
An invisible knife pierces my heart. Ever since my 59-year-old husband, Steve, lost his valiant battle with colon cancer, I’ve waited for him to call, to hear his hearty laugh — but silence looms. I long to talk to him about our five children — but he is gone. My body aches to be held by him in the night, to have his deep voice pray over me or to hear him recite “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod,” the nursery rhyme he often used to lull me to sleep — but I am alone under the covers.
My counselor tells me to accept the reality of my husband’s death, to stop tormenting myself. I must accept that I will go to him, but he will never come to me.
I don’t particularly enjoy being around Christians who haven’t suffered deeply. They can be like Job’s friends, offering pat answers, misapplying God’s truths, bumping up against the knife they do not see. They smile and quote Scriptures to me. I cringe.
They send a card with a platitude pointing out the silver lining to my pain. I close it quickly. I know they mean well. “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or like vinegar poured on soda, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart,” Proverbs 25:20 warns.
But, oh, the comfort of being with those who have suffered. They see the invisible knife. They stay by my side when I am not pleasant and listen to me drone on. They’ve been there, so they know better than to tell me God is sovereign and all things will work together for our good. I know that’s true, but I can’t hear it now.
High-tide grief is not the time to speak solutions. (Women who have had miscarriages tell me the last thing they want to hear is “You can have another baby.”) When one is grieving, it is the time for friends to be silent, to hug and to weep.
I don’t know why it diminishes grief to have someone weep with you, but it does. Friends who cry with me are like Ruth, who, having lost her own husband, could stand beside Naomi without trying to fix the unfixable. Ruth steadfastly stayed at Naomi’s side, knowing that if she did not grow weary in loving her mother-in-law, the woman who was saying, “Call me Bitter!” would become sweet again in God’s time.
The friends who comfort me the most:
• show up. (They came to the hospital, came to the funeral, came to my home.)
• write notes telling me what they loved about Steve, notes that don’t try to “fix” my pain. I am always pleased to open a letter instead of a ready-made card. Though there are exceptional cards, and I appreciate being remembered, a personal note is more likely to soothe my soul.
• talk about Steve. Some fear mentioning him, thinking it will remind me. Believe me, I haven’t forgotten — nor do I ever want to. I cherish friends who will still bring up his name and a memory. I love it if they miss him, too.
• don’t expect me to recover in a year. Instead, they are steadfast in asking me about how I’m handling my grief. They probe until I speak the truth, even if that truth releases tears. They aren’t frightened. They know tears bring healing.
• intercede by finding Scriptures and reciting them as prayers, knowing the Enemy attacks those who are down but will flee when the Word is prayed.
When friends say the wrong thing, I have come to see their heart behind the awkward words or sentiments. I must be gracious, for I have done exactly the same thing — trying to fix the unfixable. Even now, on this side of suffering, I can stammer on and say too much. Better to hug, to cry and to say simply, “I am so sorry.”
This article first appeared in the July, 2007 issue of Focus on the Family magazine. Copyright © 2007 Dee Brestin. All rights reserved.Dee Brestin is the author of The Friendships of Women and Falling in Love with Jesus. Her husband passed away in 2004.
How have friends helped you in times of grief? What have you learned to do or to not do?