Grieving on Mother’s Day
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
How do you feel about Mothers Day?
The greatest joy accompanies the greatest pain
Joy
Memories
Love
Support
Hope
Pain
Abuse
Neglect
Estrangement
Death
Infertility
Regret
Lostness
The value of lament
1 Lord, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.
3 I am overwhelmed with troubles
and my life draws near to death.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like one without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.
6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief.
I call to you, Lord, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
13 But I cry to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, Lord, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?
15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
darkness is my closest friend.
Explanation
Explanation
Crying Out Day and Night
Crying Out Day and Night
1 Lord, you are the God who saves me;
day and night I cry out to you.
2 May my prayer come before you;
turn your ear to my cry.
It’s a prayer
It’s constant (day and night)
It views the solution to the problems he will present as God listening
He will hold in tension two paradoxical truths – He feels alone and God is present in his suffering
My Wretched Situation
My Wretched Situation
3 I am overwhelmed with troubles
and my life draws near to death.
4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
I am like one without strength.
5 I am set apart with the dead,
like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
who are cut off from your care.
5 expressions of deep despair
Overwhelmed
Waves
Dying
In the pit
TV tropes (lava pit, snake pit, whirlpool
Without strength
The long rest in the car before coming into the house after a hard day at work
With the dead
Forgotten
God’s Role in my Wretchedness
God’s Role in my Wretchedness
6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
in the darkest depths.
7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;
you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.
8 You have taken from me my closest friends
and have made me repulsive to them.
I am confined and cannot escape;
9 my eyes are dim with grief. […]
The Psalmist identifies his suffering with God’s action
You have put me
Your wrath
You have taken
The Psalmist does not identify his suffering with sin
Sin can cause our suffering
Other factors can also
In the Bible there are 6 causes of suffering
Other people
Ourselves
Our bodies
Nature
Satan
God
Two directions we can take
Anger with God’s action
Confidence in his sovereignty
The Psalmist is taking this path
The Frustrating Futility of Suffering
The Frustrating Futility of Suffering
[…]
I call to you, Lord, every day;
I spread out my hands to you.
10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
11 Is your love declared in the grave,
your faithfulness in Destruction?
12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?
13 But I cry to you for help, Lord;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 Why, Lord, do you reject me
and hide your face from me?
The Psalmist asks some confused questions.
This is not a theology of eternity.
In a sense he is saying “I can accept that your plan includes my suffering for the purpose of bringing you praise, but if I’m dead, but that doesn’t make sense because the dead can’t praise you anyway.”
This kinds of frustration and lament is helpful to see in an inspired Psalm
His frustration shows confusion and uncertainty
His frustration shows frustration with God’s plan
His frustration shows the continued movement towards God in spite of this
In all this frustration he is not condemned and he does not repent.
If you feel this kind of overwhelmed confusion and frustration, the right response is to cry out to God about it rather than hide from it.
Even in the crying out he is still confused, yet he persists.
Left in the Dark
Left in the Dark
15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your terrors have destroyed me.
17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
they have completely engulfed me.
18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
darkness is my closest friend.
This is where we expect the happy ending
All the problems are solved
He feels better about the bad things because his confidence in eternal goodness
He unpacks the attributes of God in a way that lifts up his heart
None of that happens. Instead we get a Simon and Garfunkel song. “Darkness is my closest friend.”
His closing lament connects us to one of the hardest elements of suffering – loneliness
The darkness of the end of the Psalm is actually one of the most helpful aspects of this Psalm.
What do we do when we do all the right things and and still remain in the pit?
One tendency is to assume we’ve done something wrong.
This Psalm tells us that it is okay if the darkness does lift. We can weep until there are no tears left to cry, mourn with aching, unending pain, cry out until the dark corners of our room echo with our agony, but still persist in faith. God is not afraid of our pain.
Implications (3)
Implications (3)
The right response to suffering is to cry out to God
The right response to suffering is to cry out to God
Every line of this Psalm is a prayer.
Unrelenting grief is not a sin we should try to hide from God, but an invitation to persist in our cries to him.
The right posture in suffering is persistent faith
The right posture in suffering is persistent faith
Question rather than accuse
Asking why with a clenched fist or an open heart
The right hope in suffering is our suffering Savior
The right hope in suffering is our suffering Savior
Jesus came not to take away suffering but to share it.
3 He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
The suffering of Jesus assures us that our suffering is temporary
God does not suffer. He cannot be changed or affected by external forces. He cannot be altered by anything outside of himself. Yet, he does not stay far off from our suffering but assumes to himself a human nature and enters into our suffering.
In his life Jesus genuinely suffered
Because of his resurrection suffering does not get the final word.
Jesus’s suffering is complete. It’s not complete in a disconnected sense – he still bears the scars – but he is no longer subject to suffering
His suffering is truly complete but it’s impact is eternal
Applications
Applications
To the helper
To the helper
Do not run from others grief but run towards it
If loneliness is one of the hardest elements of suffering, brothers and sisters in Christ are one of the best helps in suffering
Grief makes us uncomfortable so we tend to paper it over.
How many of us would wonder if we should be rebuking a friend who shared the emotions of this Psalm with us.
By entering into the grief of those around us we embody Christ’s love whereby he moved from outside of suffering into it.
Mourn with mourners
15 Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.
2 Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
God’s heart for the grieving is far more than cliche Bible verses and an expectation of instant healing
To the sufferer
To the sufferer
Keep pressing on towards God in faith
Keep moving forward
It’s okay not to pretend, it’s not okay to sin
Obey when it’s hard
Participate in life in the body of Christ
The church is the place where Christ’s promises are most embodied
Others enter into your suffering
The sacraments are observed
The God who saves is proclaimed.
Heaven is anticipated
Do not hide from your grief. Do not hide your grief. Cry out to the One who Saves and be with the the ones who are saved.
