Changes of the Season
A new bottom line.
Posted
Thursday, April 13, 2006
by
Brian Beers
Through my grief God turned my understanding of him on its side. Before my baptism of grief, I may have said that “sin†or “his glory†was God’s bottom line. Yes. I may have considered God’s glory to be the organizing principle of God’s activity in the world and in history. I viewed God, first and foremost, as transcendent, abstracted from the world—unfamiliar with sorrow. This appears obvious to me now in the question I voiced one night in that first year after Nancy’s death. The answer I received changed my relationship with God.
I kept a journal during that first year, each entry addressed to God. One evening as I wrote in it my emotions were particularly turbulent, and I struggled, unable to write. I finally cocked my head to one side as though God were standing behind me and asked out-loud, “Do you have any idea what this feels like?†The final consonant hadn’t even left my throat when I almost heard him answer, “The garden.†Suddenly I knew. Adam—Eve—sin—death. Death! No longer did I wonder if my God understood the pain of my loss. I was privileged to glance into the depth of God’s broken heart. There, in the Garden of Eden, God’s true love died.
As understanding dawned “relationship†became the foundational theme in my theology. And it has remained so to this day. This new “bottom line†for my theology recast everything in terms of relationship and passion. While writing this I realize that “Love†may be the attribute of God that I mean when I write of relationship. Years of Sunday school, however, all but ruined “God’s Love†else I would have recognized it. God’s Love as described in Sunday school was never True Love in the Westley-and-Buttercup sense. It was more like Grandmotherly Love—stately and sure, but never stirring the blood.
One night some months later, I realized that the cross wasn’t just judicially satisfying. It was emotionally satisfying. As I stared at my lone reflection in a pool where Nancy and I had once reflected together, I wondered what I would give to have even one more hour with my true love. Moments later I looked up from that pool, filled with wonder, for the God who, in response to that same question, gave up his life.
This new bottom line has colored my every perception about God, why he does things, and why he doesn't. It doesn't mean that I like what happens. It doesn't mean that my sorrow is less, but I am comforted knowing that God viscerally understands grief and my grief. The deepest comfort comes in knowing that God doesn't have some different set of perceptions in which grief and sorrow don't hurt.
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