I’m often driving home from work somewhere between 11:30pm and midnight. Its dark and I’m tired. I need a change of pace to engage my mind and keep me awake. I stumbled upon listening to the sermons of Steve Elliott. He is the husband of a woman who taught and influenced me greatly during my year at Rocky Mountain (Bible) College. More specifically, I’ve been listening to the same three sermons over the past month. Each time, the unpretentious words Steve speaks and prays find a deeper anchor in my soul.
So on a day where I am reminded of much sorrow, I think of Steve’s sermon “The God of What’s Left.” Naomi had lost everything—her entire family, her status, her home. Talk about grief upon grief. She was bitter. And I think, “Yeah. No kidding. Her losses are equal to Job.” Yet as the story of Ruth unfolds, God takes Naomi’s losses and shapes them into joy. Her life is not over or empty, as it first seems. He takes what was left from the rubble of her life and brings joy. Redeeming Love overwhelms sorrow.
Where is God in the hard places? To be honest, in the middle of the hard places, my faith lags. But in grief and loss, in the hard places, we can see God’s ‘hidden’ hand at work. His providence. God’s fingerprints. I don’t say this lightly. And I don’t write it in an overspiritualized attempt to escape the pain or big questions about sorrow/pain. I write this after a 9 year walk, sometimes crawl, with grieving. It doesn’t mean sorrows or setbacks are somehow less painful or somehow worth it to suffer. It ‘just’ means because of the providence of God, they’re not wasted. In God’s goodness, the tears are not forgotten, the sorrows and sufferings are never wasted.
So on April 7, 2011, with 9 years of retrospect, I am grateful that He IS the God of what’s left. I am grateful He takes the dark colors on that canvas of grief and transforms them into a painting that is full of color and depth and joy and pain and love and growth and tears and laughter and purpose and thankfulness ... Thankfulness. Not for the grief or the pain or the loss. But for His goodness. His goodness that has healed my heart straight. Only because of His mercy, grief did not leave my soul crooked.
Today, I remember my brother. I think I’ll make my Great Aunt Jeanette’s peanut butter balls today in Ryan’s honor. I’ll probably watch the video/picture montage we put together for his memorial. Remembering his life. Undoubtedly, I will cry as I miss him and all that could have been. But more than anything-Today, I notice and remember God’s fingerprints and mercies all along my journey of grief.
