Skip to main content

God’s Grief

             God’s love is unimaginable.  The depths to which He will go to bring those He loves into relationship with Himself are awe inspiring.  My own personal experience of being separated from my husband through death has brought richer meaning to God’s love for me.

 As you can imagine, it is not easy to learn to live in the absence of someone who has been a constant strength for almost three decades.  All my siblings and I have long-term marriages.  I have noticed in each of us that we have taken on the characteristics of our spouses through the years.  For instance, I became more generous through living with Brian, and he became more willing to plan and save for the future through being married to me.  Decades of marriage merges minds as well as bodies and souls, thus your whole being aches when these unions are separated through death or divorce.  I have also observed in other widows that the longer you live with a soul mate (I had a mere 27 and a half years) the more agony you feel in  separation.

 I can only share with you what it feels like for me.  As I have been reflecting on the glacier-size hole left in my heart without my husband Brian, God led me to imagine the hole in His heart. His love for the whole world is far greater than mine was for Brian.  What must it feel like in God’s heart that holds love for every single person who has ever been born and yet to be separated from most of them because of sin?   What a thought! I can't imagine.

 Perfect love before the beginning of time must suffer the most from separation between heaven and earth.  When I consider the hole in God’s heart created by His love for us sinners, I realize that my pain is far less and must be endured so that God’s resolution can come to be.  I am separated from Brian for only a short time (from God’s perspective).  It is necessary for me to accept this temporary separation so that God’s work of redemption can be offered to the whole world.


God’s great love is the reason He sent Jesus to overcome death and bring redemption from our estrangement. He has done all and continues to do all to repair the separation that exists.

No wonder God sent Jesus.  Jesus is the answer to the gulf between heaven and earth. Acts 13:33 says, He has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising up Jesus. As it is written in the second Psalm: You are my son; today I have become your father.

I have something wonderful to consider that those who grieved deeply in the Old Testament did not. I know about how God sent Jesus to overcome death and the grave. God’s grief is as great as His love.  This thought has helped me to see why God gave us the sacrament of communion.  In observing the Lord’s Supper (Eucharist), I am anticipating the time when Jesus’ body and blood will redeem me completely, and I will no longer be separated from God or Brian or any that have been redeemed through the blood of Jesus Christ. Having gained a slight sense of God’s love and grief over the whole world, I long to live a life that does not grieve God.  As Paul instructed, And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30).

Copyright © 2012.  Deborah R. Newman www.teatimeforyoursoul.com  All Rights Reserved.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Pilgrimage that Started with Tears

                Who would think I would shed tears deciding to set out on a wonderful journey that I have longed to take for many years?   Before I was ready to fully accept God’s invitation for a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, I had to journey to a place of agreement between what my soul wanted and what the Lord wanted for me.   For years I have been declining opportunities to travel to Israel—not because I didn’t want to go but because I wanted to go with my husband by my side.   I know that God could have arranged that for me, but instead He asked me to accept that He wanted me to be willing to go and leave everything behind.   When I was asked to make a decision about going on a Pilgrimage to Jerusalem, God gave me this verse in answer to my prayer -- Debi, observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are cr...
2 comments
Read more

The Effects of the Holy Spirit

The Effects of the Holy Spirit               Can you imagine that the very Spirit of God is given to humans who believe in God’s gift of salvation through Jesus Christ’s death, burial and resurrection?  Just thinking about the Holy Spirit makes me realize that I can do better.  I am not left to my own resources when it comes to praying, having faith, obeying God, doing what He asks me to do.                 No one understands the depth of sin’s effect on a soul better than God.  Every action He takes has been to reduce the effect of evil that was unleashed into our world when sin was merged into His perfect universe.  We never saw it coming. Even Adam and Eve did not see what hit them.  God has counteracted with the effect of faith after sin by enabling sinners to be affected by His ho...
Post a Comment
Read more

One Year

            One week, one month, and now one year has passed since my world was turned up-side-down.   At first time felt like an eternity, each day the reality that my beloved husband was no longer with me here on earth drug on and felt like it would never resolve.   Now that a significant amount of time has passed, it doesn’t seem possible that we have lived through one whole year without him.   How did we get here?   Where have we been?   How did the earth revolve completely around the sun?   We are surviving.   We are grateful.   We have had a lot of help from heaven and from earth.             I have discovered more intimately how death is a major spiritual formation in our lives.   Whether we are deeply spiritual or not, facing death forces us to consider spiritual realities.   Our souIs are opened to a deeper u...
1 comment
Read more