Grief Examined

Sometimes I just have to stop and cry. Sunday afternoon I received a message from our LWW Guatemala Team. Rumaldo, pastor of the El Jute congregation where they just finished a water installation, lost his wife. Telma, his 45 year old wife, became ill a few days before, went to paralysis, then stroke, coma, and died Sunday.

Rumaldo spent most of the last days of Telma’s life working with our Fayetteville/Pulaski LWW team, making sure that the water filtration system was installed properly, and that his team of operators and educators were equipped to keep clean water flowing from their church and educate the community on the health, hygiene, and spiritual curriculum that supports the ongoing water distribution plan.

It’s not supposed to happen that way. Evil—or at least pain, suffering, and grief—are not supposed to come from the self-giving generosity and efforts of good people. And yet they do.

The Sunday Tennessean had an article about a Nashville area pastor who was moved to preach an 8-part series on exactly what Heaven is like after his 19 year old son died. The pastor explained, “I noticed that, generally speaking, others at the church and in the general community were not well-taught or well-educated on how to deal with when people go to heaven."

He’s had great demand for copies of the sermons in the series. The author of the article wrote, about the pastor, "He's found a population hungry for specifics."

People deal with answers, whether the answers are right, wrong, or imagined, much better than they do with questions and mystery. Scripture has more questions and mystery than specific answers, but that's never stopped humanity from conducting conciliatory shoe-horning. Faith is what we're left with when the answers run out.

I wish I had specific answers to give Pastor Romaldo—or that he could find them for himself. I wish I had such answers for many of you, and even for myself. I do not.

What I do have are faith, promise, trust, and hope. These are the things that nourish us through the unanswered questions; through the well-meaning but inadequate answers that are often offered. These are the things that give us courage to live with the questions; that give us strength to boldly proclaim that God’s ultimate answer of, “Yes!” is both powerful and loving enough to overcome all our earthly grief.

© 2009 Todd Jenkins