Here we are at the end of Passion Week on the eve of another Resurrection Sunday. It's been strange to me to have a fairly normal life during this Easter season. This is the first time in over 20 years that Passion week hasn't been the busiest and most stressful week of the year. Since leaving my job in a church over 6 months ago, it's been a daily strangeness. A world I knew so well is increasingly foreign to me as I embrace a new life outside of "church world". To be honest, it hasn't been without an important and at times painful mourning period.
I'm sure you can agree that the human soul does not easily embrace loss regardless of what we've lost or how it's been lost to us. We fight to keep what we've worked for, what we've been given, what we've found. With a white-knuckled ferocity, we hold on; and when we lose, the emptiness can seem debilitating. It's true whether the choice to let go was ours or not.
Loss is pain, and mourning is not limited to the process of physical death. We mourn the loss of a dream, the death of a hope, even the subtle shift of a life we imagined to one we didn't expect. We grieve the affect of sin, the loss of innocence, the temporary triumph of evil.
But the resurrection changes everything. In the midst of our loss, it brings us back to the absolute truth that mourning turns to morning, and death never has the final verdict. At the darkest moment of their lives, the disciples and followers could not imagine the life that would come from their loss, but through them the message of Jesus proliferated throughout the world and history. Jesus explained it this way when He said, "unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24)
So what have you lost? What are you grieving? What died or is dying? There is a life that can spring from its death. There is a hope of receiving more than what you've lost. There is hope that death won't have the final say. You can grieve and feel everything you need to feel to get through what you're going through, but rest assured that life can raise out of your loss.
Sure... you could remain a seed, and have a safe and happy, and likely unproductive, life. You could never experience loss or change, but you were made for more than that. A Savior Who called you "mine" has more for you than that. Whatever you've lost is making room for abundance. We are believers in Jesus, children of the resurrection. Your mourning is likely turning to morning. There is hope. Embrace it.
I'm sure you can agree that the human soul does not easily embrace loss regardless of what we've lost or how it's been lost to us. We fight to keep what we've worked for, what we've been given, what we've found. With a white-knuckled ferocity, we hold on; and when we lose, the emptiness can seem debilitating. It's true whether the choice to let go was ours or not.
Loss is pain, and mourning is not limited to the process of physical death. We mourn the loss of a dream, the death of a hope, even the subtle shift of a life we imagined to one we didn't expect. We grieve the affect of sin, the loss of innocence, the temporary triumph of evil.
But the resurrection changes everything. In the midst of our loss, it brings us back to the absolute truth that mourning turns to morning, and death never has the final verdict. At the darkest moment of their lives, the disciples and followers could not imagine the life that would come from their loss, but through them the message of Jesus proliferated throughout the world and history. Jesus explained it this way when He said, "unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it bears much fruit." (John 12:24)
Sure... you could remain a seed, and have a safe and happy, and likely unproductive, life. You could never experience loss or change, but you were made for more than that. A Savior Who called you "mine" has more for you than that. Whatever you've lost is making room for abundance. We are believers in Jesus, children of the resurrection. Your mourning is likely turning to morning. There is hope. Embrace it.