Sept 27 - Psalm 23:4a

Yea, though I walk through

the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil

Psalm 23:4a

KJV

It has been said that …

We each walk through

the Valley of Death but once …

but we walk through

the Valley of the Shadow of Death

again and again.

Death casts a long shadow, and grief threatens to swallow us. Even when we have a Christian surety of hope and heaven, grief can still cut a hole deep into our soul.

Some say that Christians shouldn’t grieve. I say that when we grieve much, it simply means that we loved much. Even our Lord Jesus wept at the tomb of his friend Lazarus (and he would raise him in just a matter of minutes).

The hole that a death leaves behind is precisely the “size” of the person who died. An acquaintance leaves a pit in our stomach. A friend leaves a hole in our heart. The death of a mother leaves a bigger hole deep in our soul. A spouse leaves a gaping gorge. And the death of child leaves a canyon that is anything but grand. Grief hurts.

“Grief-work” is learning to walk a path around that hole.

•      At first, every time you approach the hole, you immediately fall in. The grief is raw and numbing, and that pit seems to have a gravity of its own.
•      After a while, you don’t fall in quite so often.
•      Soon, you begin to wear a path into the loose dirt.
•      After about a year – more or less and depending on the severity of the loss – you’ll have learned to walk a new path in life around that hole.
•      Eventually, you’ll cry on the first day you forget to remember the loved one. That’s not a betrayal, because you’ll never really forget.
•      From time to time – and when you expect it the least – you’ll still fall in.
•      Finally, as your journey moves inevitably forward, you’ll look back and be very thankful for that hole. You’ll never be thankful for the loss, but you’ll be thankful for the person that this hole represents. 

By the time I was old enough to pay much attention, my grandfather had been dead for about thirty years. He died as young man, when my own father was about thirteen. My father and grandmother had been at that final stage of grief for decades. They were thankful for that hole because it represented a treasured part of life, and they talked warmly about a man I never knew.

Nevertheless, I remember sitting at grandma’s kitchen table one day, and I can remember her falling suddenly back into that hole. With my father, she was talking about the good old days, and suddenly she grew very angry. “I can’t believe Mr. So-and-So made your father go out and check on that pump that day. It was 10 degrees outside. Didn’t he know Almond was sick? He never recovered after that. The pneumonia killed him.”

Even thirty years later, we can still walk through the Valley of Shadow of Death and fall headlong into a deep hole. Grief hurts.

As Christians, we grieve … but we do “not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again” we have the assurance that “death has been swallowed up in victory.” (1 Thes 4:13,14; 1 Cor 15:54 NRSV).

Through faith, God “has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” and this “hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us” (1 Pet 1:3; Rom 5:5 NRSV).

This kind of faith and hope will carry you through the shadows – which are real and overwhelming.

Even better, faith and hope will carry us through that final valley – that once ever trip through the Valley of Death – and there you will find that God has “open[ed] wide the gates of heaven for you to enter into the eternal Kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet 1:11).

In Christ’s Love,

a pastor who’s done a hundred funerals

and sees God more clearly each time