Are we going to listen to our modern culture of stuffing loss and heartache or are we going to listen to God? Will we become imprisoned in our grief or will we learn to fly? How does God want us to experience loss? What does loss sound like to Him? What is the role of mourning?
As I walked through my Bible study this morning it was revealed to me that God wants to hear from us when we are grieving. When loss hits us so hard that mourning pours out of us, He is listening, He is there and He can handle it all.
“Even now,” declares the Lord,
~ Joel 2:12 (NIV)
“return to me with all your heart,
with fasting and weeping and mourning.”
When the heartache is more than we can bare at times, turn to God with ALL of our heart. He already knows it is broken.
Allow the tears and mourning to flow through us instead of getting stuck in us.
The heartache may feel too big to move through but He is not asking us to focus on the movement, He is asking us to fast, weep and mourn. Take this moment at hand and deal with it, not stuff it, hide from it, or allow our current culture to stifle this crucial step.
Be still, know that He is God and there for us.
” 7 Submit yourselves, then, to God. ….8 Come near to God and he will come near to you. …. 9 Grieve, mourn and wail. Change your laughter to mourning and your joy to gloom. 10 Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.”
James 4:7-10 (NIV)
Again, He tells us to turn to Him, draw near to Him. As we are in His presence we then can productively grieve, mourn and wail. He is there for us. He will listen to us.
I have a really bad habit of smiling and laughing through the roughest stuff. It is when I have exceeded my ability to deal with loss.
God is telling us to change our laughter to mourning and joy to gloom. It is okay to wipe the smiles off of our faces for a time.
Through tremendous loss, I have been humbled. Humbling myself before the Lord will be the guiding light to raise me above the loss when the time is right.
Jesus has given me permission, through God’s word, to grieve, mourn and wail. Whether our surroundings allow for it or not, God has final authority over our loss and how we are to mourn.
The chatter of this world can keep us going in circles, getting nowhere. Remember those circleing Israelites??
He will show us how to express loss and heartache so we do not get stuck in bitterness and pain.
It is not usually a straight path through mourning.
It would be a straighter path if we moved out some of the sounds of grief and loss.
I wonder if God is handing us permission to move out the impossible heartache and make more room for Him? He has given us what we need to do it. He has his own way of nourishing us through His wisdom. He feeds us exactly what we need in our time of sorrow.
Mourn So We Can Make A Joyful Noise
Can we even begin to hear what God hears? He has created the whole universe and the depths of the sea.
As I listened to this, it expanded my sense of mourning through sound. I could hear a fraction of the joy of the stars and the whales. I know, that makes no sense.
A fellow blogger posted this video that opened my ears a little more to a fraction of what God hears. In all of God’s majesty, He has shown me that my grieving, wailing and mourning do not have to adapt to the comfort of those around me. He wants to hear from me through a time of loss.
Video only 8 minutes long… you can do it!!!