Lunch For Three - Day 13

Nooma 012|Matthew
"Suffering the loss of someone we love can be the most difficult thing in life to deal with. One moment we have them and the next they're gone. What are we supposed to do? How are we supposed to feel? The truth is, there's no certain way we're "supposed" to feel. Whatever we're feeling, it's okay. It's okay to feel shock, anger, denial or whatever we may feel. It's okay. And if we don't feel anything at all, that's okay too. It's okay to have no answers and no explanations. Because sometimes all the reasoning and comforting words in the world just isn't what we need. What might help us however is to understand how Jesus dealt with this kind of loss." NOOMAtube

Our God is full of love and hope and His message is of a better life someday in Heaven. But we live on a fallen Earth, and until we are called to join our Father in Heaven we will inevitably have to experience death. Have you lost someone recently? When I lost my Grandmother years ago, I was stricken with pain. She went in for a normal routine surgery and never made it out. Now you see, for the majority of my life my grandma was the only grandparent that I had. One of my grandpas died when I was really young and I never got the chance to meet my other grandparents. So she was really special to me and when she passed away it seemed surreal. One day she was there and the next she was not. This was one of the few times in my life that I have really seen my dad cry. My dad is a great man, but for the most part holds his emotions on the inside, so seeing this emotion pouring out of him made me realize how sad it was to lose my grandma.

The tears that were flowing down our faces that day were not only tears of sadness. Masked behind the grief for me was anger, grief, guilt, and fear. I wasn't sure exactly how I was supposed to feel. One comforting thing to note is that in times of sorrow and sadness Jesus felt the same way.

• "When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled." John 11:33.
• "Jesus wept." John 11:35

"It's easy, when we suffer loss, for whatever it is that we lost to become the center of our life. We had them, and now they're gone. And so there's this giant hole where they once were and it becomes all we can think about. And what happens in the process is our whole life becomes what we don't have and we lose out on what we do have" (Rob Bell). And what we do have is a hope. A hope for a life that our God has promised us. In the video Rob says, "The first Christians spoke about a day in the future when God would restore everything - you, me, everything in heaven and on earth." Find great hope in that!

Chris Tomlin has a song out right now called I Will Rise off of his Hello Love album. CLICK HERE to see a video of Chris Tomlin talking about this song. In the video Chris states that he was having a conversation while touring on the road with a band member and the band member suggested the Chris write a song for people in their hardest times of life. He suggested that Chris write something for the church in that moment. Based off of the line "the grave is overwhelmed" he wrote the song. Chris says that he wanted to reflect the image of hope that John gives us in Revelations when he has his vision of heaven. Abby and I went to the Chris Tomlin concert at Excel this weekend and when they sang this song I got chills all over my body. The bridge of the song reflects John's imagery from Revelations. At this point, with 10,000 people singing around me I lost it, I mean full blown tears. Take a couple minutes and listen to the song and see the vision of hope that we have to carry around with us everyday. This is my favorite song out there right now!

"May you realize that Jesus wept. And may you come to see that whatever you're feeling, it's okay. May you make the choice not to become bitter and closed, but open. And may you realize that God is sitting shivah with you, fully present, grieving your loss...but also restoring. And in that, may we find hope." Rob Bell

He [Jesus] must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through his holy prophets. - Acts 3:21