Grief's Path To God
August 16, 2021 • by Christine Gordon and Hope Blanton
Tom was my (Chris’s) first friend in Nebraska. When my husband and I moved into the house next to his, we went from initial pleasantries and learning one another’s stories to drinking each other’s coffee and borrowing tools. He ate dinner with us and played with my children. He sang hymns with us around the piano.
A few months later, his sudden death was a huge blow to my entire family. The large church where he occasionally led worship held his funeral and was completely packed. As a worship leader began the service he said something to the effect of, “I don’t really know what to say right now, but I know what we can always do. We can always worship.” He led us straight into Blessed Assurance and other praise songs.
In that moment I felt lost, alone, and angry. I didn’t want to sing about assurance––I was sad! I wanted to cry out to God with all of those other people to whom Tom meant something. I wanted to collectively grieve and cry, lament and miss him. I sat in silence, arms crossed, frustrated.
The worship leader had not done anything wrong. He was doing the best he knew to do in a hard situation. But he had missed an opportunity.
A Pattern of Lament
In the Psalms we are given countless ways to be honest about our grief and subsequently move towards trust in God. This is the pattern we see over and over in the book: a statement of loss, fear, anger, or distress followed by crying out to the Lord. Eventually the Psalmist usually comes back to a truth about God’s character that calms him and reminds him of why he trusted God in the first place.
“In the Psalms we are given countless ways to be honest about our grief and subsequently move towards trust in God.”
Psalm 130 follows this pattern and has served many saints who are grieving with words to articulate their very present ache. Though it’s short, it’s packed with emotion and expression of deep pain. Verses 1 and 2 read:
“Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD!
O Lord, hear my voice!
Let your ears be attentive
to the voice of my pleas for mercy!”
This was how I felt that day sitting in the back of the sanctuary - in the depths. I wanted to cry out to a God who wasn’t. I needed him to hear me and all the others around me. We needed mercy. We needed to be listened to.
An Acknowledgement of Grief
The psalmist goes on:
“If you, O LORD, should mark iniquities,
O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness,
that you may be feared.”
We knew our brother, Tom, had known Jesus’s forgiveness, and it was a comfort to us then. We were sure of his place, sure that he was present with Jesus, assured of his reward, met by his master and friend. But we had been left behind. Our grief felt heavy and unexpected.
Verses 5-6 reads:
“I wait for the LORD, my soul waits,
and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord
more than watchmen for the morning,
more than watchmen for the morning.”
In our grief, we wait. Our souls wait for God to show up, to redeem, to carry us through. We hope in his word, his promises, his character. This is the intersection of pain and promise, this place of waiting in our grief. It may not be the grief of losing someone you love. It may be the death of a dream that you grieve, the loss of a relationship, the disappointment of a spouse’s choices or even the inability to conceive. It may be the loss of an ability, health, or youth. We bring these losses to God and we wait. But notice how we wait.
“In our grief, we wait. Our souls wait for God to show up, to redeem, to carry us through. ”
Waiting in Expectation
...more than watchmen for the morning…
How does a watchman wait? Probably with twitches, sleepy hours, longing, stretches, and a general struggle. There isn’t much to do as a watchman; he mostly waits for dawn. The watchman in this Psalm would have stood most of the night, standing on the wall of the city, watching for danger.
But we watch and wait for something else. In our grief, in our loss, we wait for the Lord himself. We long for his presence, his warmth in our darkness. We wait for his hope to make itself known, for his Spirit to wake us again.
Notice the honesty of the Psalmist. He does not tamp down his need or tuck away his anguish. He lays it all out before God, expecting something. There is always something we need, always something for which we are waiting on God. This is life in a world where Eve ate the fruit––a continual waiting on God, a regular admittance of our pain, whatever it is. And then?
Hope in Your God
“O Israel, hope in the LORD!
For with the LORD there is steadfast love,
and with him is plentiful redemption.
And he will redeem Israel
from all his iniquities.” (Verses 7-8)
The psalmist reminds himself of what he knows is true. His hope is found in the God who is steadfast, loyal, steady. God is generous with his redemption. This is the pattern of the Psalms and must be our pattern as well. We have absolute freedom to come with our anguish and in our overwhelmed state. We wait in our pain for the only one who can do anything about it. And then we remind ourselves of what we know to be true. God is faithful. He loves us. He is for us. He forgives us.
We wait for God to come and be present with us in this pain. His presence is what he has promised, and what our souls long for as we walk the heavy steps through the dark night of grief. We wait for him, our souls long for him, and by his Spirit, he meets us there.
Hope Blanton, LCSW, is wife to Ray and mother of three. She earned her master’s in clinical social work at Temple University. Currently she writes for At His Feet Studies and works as a counselor in San Antonio. She loves good food, making people laugh, and being outside.
Christine Gordon, MATS, is wife to Michael and mother of three. She earned her Master of Arts in Theological Studies at Covenant Seminary. She lives in St. Louis, where she writes for At His Feet Studies and works as the intake coordinator for a counseling practice. She loves to walk, make music with other people, and share bad puns with her family.
Please find Hope and Christine at their website and follow them on Instagram.
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