Peace Robbers: Sickness and grief
This month addresses a topic that is both big and ugly. It is quite likely to immediately steal our peace. The topic is sickness and grief. They both steal our usual, our routine, our humdrum. They rob us of plans and anticipated futures. When sickness or grief hits us or our dear loved ones, it isn’t planned or embraced. It challenges us individually; it challenges our relationship with our Father.
In my research for this month, I found many discussions of the whys, why me, why him/her, why now, why not heal? There are no ‘good’ answers to these why questions and so many resources to find them, so I will not attempt it. If you are reading this, you have probably wrestled with those questions and can articulate them well. My only answer to the whys, is that God is here, God is with you. He is not surprised by your situation, He, in fact, ‘goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged,’ (Deuteronomy 31:8).
Challenge our relationship with God
There is a struggle of massive proportions when sickness and/or grief hits. We struggle to trust God, we question his character, we question our identity in him, we struggle to rest. We struggle with anger and lack of control. This is the challenge to our relationship with the Father that I refer to.
And the response to that challenge is what will drive us, it will drive us away or draw us closer. We have a choice to walk closer to God or turn away. We have a choice to surrender at His feet, or to do it our way. We are woefully inadequate to address these issues on our own, but the strongest thing that God placed in my heart to say this month is that it is never too late to turn to Him, to walk closer to Him, to surrender at His feet.
Never too late for God
He derives immense joy and pleasure in seeing you turn to Him. Even if five or ten or even 50 years have passed since that sickness or death in your life, He waits with open arms for you. Even if you are angry and blame Him for things, even if you are so distraught you have a hard time looking for Him, He is with you; reach out. He has no greater desire than to be with you. Even if you chose to use your own strength, to cut yourself off, to cut off that area of your life from God’s involvement, it is never too late for Him to comfort you and restore your joy.
Vast topic of sickness and grief
The topic of sickness and grief is so vast: broken bones to cancer to infertility to amputation to the loss of a spouse, friend, child or parent, as well as many, many others. It seemed important to hear different walks in this topic, so I asked several people to share their experiences. Without exception, the responses showed me the struggle that we have with sickness and grief, our own and that of our loved ones. Some folks felt they were not in a good place to discuss their struggles, and to those who are right there, God knows and is with you. You need not utter a word, but turn your heart to Him, lift your eyes to Him. We deal with sickness and grief in waves I think, doing well one day and poorly the next. We make progress then slide back to struggling. We each deal with these struggles differently, just as each of us is different. But our God is constant, He is never changing, always loving. You need not talk for Him to understand. How great the number of psalms of despair we have, yet those laments too are included for us to share and even call our own. In the meantime, we walk the struggle. And that is okay. We are encouraged by the struggle so that we depend more and more on Him, and count it joy when we have trials and testing of faith (James 1:2-3). Our weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5), though we do not know how long the night will last, the morning is coming.
Take heart, hold tight, walk closely with God
So, take heart the Lord is with you, turn to him and let him hold you close. It is never too late to hold firmly to Him and walk closely with Him; He will do joyous things for you.
