What is There to Celebrate on Mother’s Day?
“Motherhood. It brings with it such complicated grief; yet in the midst of that grief, there lies a beauty endowed by the Creator. Because since before the fall, motherhood has been God’s very good plan to show us more of himself. Since the fall, its complexity often clouds out the beauty, leaving us wondering at times what there is to celebrate on Mother’s Day.” What is There to Celebrate on Mother’s Day? by Madelyn Istrate
The Sacred Invitation of Lent: How the Freedom to Lament Leads Us to Hope
“We are invited into deeper communion with Christ when we soberly observe the time leading up to Holy Week. The celebration of Resurrection Sunday is all the more joyful when we have intentionally denied our flesh of certain worldly desires, just as Jesus denied his flesh by willingly giving up his life on our behalf. So this is the sacred invitation of Lent: that we learn to grieve our sin and our brokenness; leaning into the gift of godly lament. Through this, may we be healed, and may he receive glory.” The Sacred Invitation of Lent: How the Freedom to Lament Leads Us to Hope by Ashley Setterlind
Can Lament Be Worship?
“Have you ever felt like it was wrong to be honest about your grief? Perhaps you’ve told yourself, “It could be worse” or “At least...” Maybe someone said something that made you feel that by crying too much or lingering too long in mourning you weren’t living in faith or hope. But platitudes, conciliations, or guilt don’t help us much to navigate grief. It is painful to live in our cursed and broken world. This is not the pristine world God created. We were not meant to feel betrayal or disease. We were not meant to witness death or severed relationships. But we do. We live in the in-between—between Christ’s victory over death on the cross and when Christ will return and fix all the brokenness. While we wait, we face death, but we have access to rich grace in the face of death. We have lament.” Can Lament Be Worship? by Alyson Punzi
The Worth in Our Waiting by Jenn Hesse
“The Lord gradually opened my eyes to his deeper purposes for that hard season of waiting. He wasn’t pressing me under his thumb as a harsh faith lesson. Instead, he wanted more for me than any earthly desire. Through waiting I came to realize that God’s plan is always the long game. He created us in Christ for good works he prepared beforehand (Eph. 2:10). He is committed to complete the good work he started in us at salvation (Phil. 1:6). By His Spirit we are being transformed into his image from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18). Waiting might feel like wasted time to us, when nothing is happening and we’re not able to reach our goals. That’s not how time works with God. His Word shows us that waiting is open season for sanctification. In the interval between wanting and receiving, he actively grows us to become more like our Savior.” - The Worth in Our Waiting by Jenn Hesse
In Your Trials, Remember What Is True
“Maybe you’re single, and you want to be married. Maybe you just learned your mom has cancer. Maybe your husband has been unfaithful. Maybe your baby is in the NICU. Maybe you’re juggling multiple responsibilities and don’t know how to be “all in” with any of them. Whatever it is, your hard is your suffering. Like a wounded animal, vulnerable to a predator’s attack, we’re more prone in our suffering to the enemy of our souls. But God’s Word teaches us how to ‘be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might’.” - In Your Trials, Remember What Is True, by Katie Faris
God's Sovereignty in Our Suffering
“We don’t need to know all of the answers for why *fill in the blank* is happening before deciding to trust God. Our pain doesn’t have to make sense before God uses it for his greater purpose. Even as we groan earthside, Scripture reveals reasons to rejoice over the results of suffering in our lives—endurance, character, and hope (Rom. 5:3-5). Our dependence on God is never so apparent as during periods of suffering. Sometimes, the character he wants to develop in us for his glory can only come through hardship. We can learn to receive this as a gift; that our Master Gardener’s pruning produces the fruit of his Spirit in us.” - God's Sovereignty in Our Suffering by Ashley Setterlind
Outward Comfort for the Inward Ache
“Two months ago, I lost my sister. In my sorrow, I learned two things. The first is this: the gospel is big enough to hold up all our hurts. The pain of this world does not get to have the last word. Not in my sister’s life. Not in my life. And the second? Love is a verb and is best lived out in workaday ways. It doesn’t have to be flashy. It just needs to be faithful. It just has to show up. Hygge is not a necessary component to healing the hurt of searing loss. But, it certainly helps. If we let it, the comfort we provide to those in grief can be a tangible tool to show them the love of Christ.” - Outward Comfort for the Inward Ache by Jamie Erickson
God’s Heart Toward Us When Life Is Hard
“In that series of months, God seemed far away to my family and me. We found ourselves asking, “Why would God allow this? What is the point of this? Why us?” It felt like God’s heart toward us was punishment or spite or anything other than love. At that young age, I didn’t have the answers, nor did I have the ability to articulate all I was thinking. But in the years since I have realized that in the moments that life is hard, God’s heart toward us is never hate or punishment or indifference. It is only love.” - God’s Heart Toward us When Life is Hard by Keagan Hayden
Finding Jesus in the Furnace
“The day we received my first cancer diagnosis, my husband and I sat down with our (then) six-year-old son to tell him the news. Jeremy shed some tears and hugged me tight. I locked eyes with him and said, “This is hard, isn’t it, bud? It’s not good news. But God is with us, and he turns everything for our good. Everything.” Jeremy paused, then asked if we could read the story of “the fiery furnace.” My husband opened the Bible to Daniel 3 and read of King Nebuchadnezzar’s intimidating gold statue, threatening edict, and furious rage at Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego when they refused to bow down. You know how the story goes: after the men had been bound and thrown into the fiery inferno… My husband finished the story and closed the Bible, and after a pause Jeremy said, “There are four of us in this family.” In his suffering, a six-year-old looked and saw that God was with us in our own fiery furnace. He was given eyes to see Jesus standing with us in the flames. ‘” - Finding Jesus in the Furnace by Colleen Chao
Gospel Hope in Infertility, Loss, and Unmet Expectations
“In the early years of my infertility journey, I fought my grief tooth and nail. But over the years I’ve realized the beauty of the pathway of lament. I’ve found that while lament leads us to hope, we must go through grief first. True Christian lament doesn’t ignore the pain and the brokenness of this world. Rather, it acknowledges it, enters into it, and through it draws nearer to the compassionate heart of Christ.” - Gospel Hope in Infertility, Loss, and Unmet Expectations by Lauren Bowerman
Three Pitfalls When Life is Hard
“It’s easy to equate our ease and comfort as God’s love for us, and our pain and suffering as his punishment or indifference. But his love is not dictated by the circumstances around us, it’s dictated by the truth that he loved us when we hated him, died for us while we mocked him, and pursued us while we were determined to go our own way. When we face painful circumstances, even the ones that seem senseless, we need to constantly remind ourselves of God’s steadfast love toward us. When we can’t understand his ways, we can trust his character.” - Three Pitfalls When Life is Hard, by Sarah Walton
How Should We Cry Out to God?
“In so many ways I see the tension between brokenness and beauty, injustice and promised redemption, Jesus’ finished work and the pain that still exists in our world. And as I wander through this broken world with my broken body, I am encouraged by the model I see from the psalmist: a model of honest, true, broken lament that leads to sure, true, steadfast hope. I see him enter into the grief, acknowledge the brokenness, and yet in the midst of it still cling to faith in God. My heart swells at the thought, “could my grief be the very path that leads me to deeper hope?”” - How Should We Cry Out to God? by Lauren Bowerman
Grief's Path To God
“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.” - Grief’s Path to God, by Christine Gordon and Hope Blanton