I don't expect to recognize each 'month' as some sort of landmark. Really every day is. Every day that we are relearning how to move forward and to live. Every day that we point the small children to Christ and teach them to accept all things from the Fathers hand.
What an opportunity we have, and do not take lightly, to teach the small children to 'bless the Lord' and accept His blessings as well as His refining.
Spurgeon has some good words on grieving and mourning. I think this audience would benefit far better by reading words from the prince of preachers rather than me. So I will leave you with this:)
“We grieve, but not as those who have no hope.” The exhortation here is delicately hinted at
– that the sorrow of bereaved Christians for their Christian friends ought not to be at all like
the sorrow of unconverted persons for their ungodly relatives. We are not forbidden to
sorrow: “Jesus wept.” The gospel does not teach us to be Stoics; we ought to weep for it was
intended that the rod should be felt otherwise we could not “hear the rod, and who hath
appointed it.” If we did not feel the stroke when our friends were taken away, we should
prove ourselves worse than heathen men and publicans. God’s grace does not take away our
sensibilities, it only refines them and in some degree restrains the violence of their
expression. Still, there ought to be some difference between the sorrow of the righteous and
the sorrow of the wicked.
Again, there is another thing we must never allow to enter into our grief – the least degree of
repining. A wicked man, when he sorrows for those who are gone without hope, not
unfrequently murmurs against God. But it is far otherwise with the Christian: he meekly
bows his head, and says, “Thy will, O God, be done.” The Christian must still acknowledge
the same gracious hand of God, whether it be stretched forth to give or to take away. The
language of his faith is, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him; though he should take all
away, yet will I not repine.” I do not say that all Christian persons are able to maintain such a
cheerful submission of spirit. I only say that they ought, and that such is the tendency of the
Christian religion; and if they had more of the Spirit of God within their hearts that would be
their habitual disposition. We may sorrow, beloved, but not with repining. There must be
resignation mixed with the regret. There must be the yielding up, even with grateful
acquiescence, that which God asks for, seeing we believe that he doth but take what is his
own.
To read Spurgeons full sermon, you can find it here; http://teachingresources1.files.wordpress.com/2010/01/0304-christian-grief-chs.pdf
1 comment:
Thank you Adams family for sharing this. This has been an encouragement for me, as me and my siblings take a time to remember our mother's 16th anniversary of her death.
I praise God for His grace towards you all and how you grieve; and yet, not as those who have no hope. Thank you for being a testimony of hope, a prime example as people who have lost, yet have received and still possess every good and perfect gift that is from above.
Post a Comment