By Drew Williams
Sentinel Columnist
I had a friend named Helen whose laugh could shake a house to its foundations. She was one of the most energetic and fun people I have ever met. Everything I ever learned about how to pray I learned from Helen. And although neither of us saw this coming, Helen also taught me a great deal about grief.
Helen was married to Phil for over 40 years, and then one day she called me, distraught and in tears, from the emergency room to tell me that Phil had been taken from her in an instant. In the first days of her grief her strong faith kept her afloat and the memorial service for Phil was a time of real celebration and thanksgiving. But then life got very hard. I was a newly ordained minister and often felt powerless in the face of her overwhelming grief.
A few months later, during Holy Week, our church had arranged for various local artists to exhibit their work depicting the last week of Jesus’s life. I recall Helen standing completely motionless and in stunned silence before one piece of art. The painting showed a small group of women grieving the death of Jesus, with the cross in the background. The painting was abstract: the women were in profile, their mouths hanging so wide open it looked as if their jaws had been broken. It was a very powerful and haunting scene but one that Helen immediately recognized. She told me, “Do you see how their grief rises up like a tsunami from within and pours through them with such brute strength?” Helen knew this pain. Her heart was broken. C.S. Lewis also knew this pain and described it this way: “The death of a beloved is an amputation.”
Some people have been taught that somehow to grieve is to show a lack of faith. In the depths of his own grief, Lewis wrote, “It is hard to have patience with people who say, ‘There is no death’ or ‘Death doesn’t matter.’ There is death… You might as well say that birth doesn’t matter.” The Bible would strongly support Lewis. Have you ever wondered why Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus when He clearly had a plan to raise Lazarus from the dead? And yet John tells us that, “Jesus [was] deeply moved again…” (John 11:38). What Jesus understood about the depths of human grief moved him very, very deeply. The Greek word used by John to describe Jesus’s emotion actually means to “bellow with anger.” Jesus was not so much consumed with uncontrollable grief but with irrepressible anger! Jesus was furious at evil, death and suffering. John Calvin says that here we find Jesus bellowing with rage against “the general misery of the whole human race.” Death hurts; it bruises and it robs.
Jesus came to conquer death. This is what His death and resurrection accomplished. It brought the defeat of the power of death in our lives. Jesus has transformed the reality of death: what once separated us from God will never separate us from the love of God. What was once finality, and hopelessness, is now the means by which we are united with Jesus and permanently transformed into His eternal likeness.
We don’t have to fear death—we grieve, but we don’t have to fear.
I recall praying with Helen one afternoon. I had run dry of words and my heart just ached for her. Inwardly, I prayed that the Lord would give me His word. I was seized by a new thought. I said, “Helen, I know that this grief may feel as if it is going to overwhelm you but the Lord will not let it crush you.”
The Apostle Paul writes, “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). Paul is not saying that there is no place for grief but that our very real grief is held within our very real hope in Jesus. And in Jesus, this is a hope that comes searching for us. My prayer is that even as you read this column you may hear His voice speaking His comfort to your heart. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted” (Matthew 5:4).
The months passed into a year. One day I went to see Helen on some church-related matter. I don’t recall those details. I do recall strains of Handel’s “Messiah” rattling the windows of her house as I approached the front door. Finally she heard me above the music. Her face was wet with tears but I recognized her joy. “Do you know how long Jesus will reign for?” she asked me. I said I suspected that she had a good answer for me. She beamed back, “Forever and ever!” And then she shot me another question, “And do you know how long that is?” I smiled knowing that she did not need for me to answer. She said, “That’s forever, and ever, and ever, and ever, and ever…!” She continued, “Which means that Phil is with Jesus forever and ever, and when it’s my turn to go home my place with Jesus is forever and ever!” And for the longest time, she laughed. Really laughed.
This is how God breaks into our grief. In the midst of our very real pain and suffering He leads with compassion. He walks patiently with us and He promises to shoulder our grief. His assurance is of the certain hope of eternal life. John tells us that in the fullness of time, “[God] will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore…” (Revelation 21:4). Helen passed away earlier this year. I miss her very much, but I know that what she glimpsed that day, when Handel’s Messiah thundered from her living room, she now knows in full.
The Rev’d Drew Williams, Senior Pastor of Trinity Church, has been living with severe, debilitating chronic pain for more than three years. He knows the desperation that comes with wondering if he would ever be pain free. At the same time, he shares, “By the grace of God, that desperation has also brought an increased intensity and honesty, as well as a deeper intimacy, in my relationship with God.” He now shares something of his struggle in a series of devotional writings for the Greenwich Sentinel.
