God's Grief.

 My Jesus is a man of SORROWS, acquainted with GRIEF. My Jesus is TOUCHED with the FEELING of my infirmities.  My God knows grief, my God understands my sorrow.  So often people imagine God as being incapable of grieving because He is the one who allows grief. We tell ourselves if we had the power to keep grief at bay we'd use it all the time. We question why grief is allowed. Truthfully what we know as grief is miniscule compared to God's grief. 

On a small scale we are allowed to comprehend what it is to lose a loved one. God, on a scale much larger, loses those He would love all the time from the first loss in Cain down to whoever will be the last. God knows the incredible heartbreak of losing millions and millions and millions and millions of people in permanence, not temporarily. We do not know the ultimate fate of a single loved one, not one. We like to imagine we know the heart of one another but truthfully, the sweetest of hearts to us could be the vilest to God. We do not know the hearts. Some people live in a fantasy world of their own making which includes the fantasy of all our loved ones belonging to God. I would love to live in that fantasy, but I can't. I don't even know my own heart let alone that of anyone else. Jer 17:9  The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it? 

We live with the HOPE that our dead loved ones will rise on the day of resurrection, and we are allowed that hope because otherwise our grief would be too much to bear. God lives with the grief instantly when someone dies because He knows if they chose not to love Him. God knows those who will not rise on the day of resurrection and He is not callous about it at all. Every death of those who made the choice not to belong to Him is felt by Him, mourned by Him. 

You might think that if God is experiencing this grief it makes no sense when He could simply end all grief with a thought, but if that was something He would choose to do, He would not be our God. With the entrance of sin came grief, and only when sin is gone can there be no grief. We are allowed glimpses into the whys and wherefores of God, of His ways, but they truly are way above our full comprehension. 

People grapple with God allowing sin at all as they refuse to understand that to do otherwise is not love. Force negates love. Can you force a single person to love? No, you cannot. We try to force love upon mother's for their children saying it's unnatural for a mother not to love their newborn child. Imagine the shock of a mother who feels nothing for their baby, no love at all. That mother tries to force herself to love her baby because that is what all mothers are supposed to do. Something is wrong with the mother when that instant love isn't there, the mother is broken in some way- we say. Yet still, even though we try to force mother love it does not mean every mother will love.  If you're reading this and you can't comprehend a mother not loving their newborn baby,  it happens a lot more than people want to believe. And if we can't be sure that every new mother will love their child, how can we be sure of any love? Children are to love their parents- but that's not always true either. Loving one another- we make a choice to love someone, and all too often make the choice to stop loving that same someone. LOVE cannot be forced even for a moment so why do we want an existence of forced love? We are asking for that existence when we blame God for all evil. We are crying out for a dictator to rule us, not a creator ruling from love. 

I can't know if any of my loved ones will rise on resurrection day, but I HOPE! I hope my loved ones will be resurrected, and I praise God I can have that hope and live in that hope. I won't play God by trying to delude myself and assure myself of a loved one's resurrection, I will keep the truth before my eyes and lay claim to hope.

So, if you want to reassure me of my husband's resurrection I will take your surety for what it is and continue my hoping. Will I see my husband again someday- I HOPE so. Will I see my mother and father, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends- I hope so. Will they see me- I hope so. I live in HOPE, my faith is in hope for faith IS the substance of things HOPED for.

And as the song- My Hope Is Built On Nothing Less- says:

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus' blood and righteousness

I dare not trust the sweetest frame

But wholly lean on Jesus' name

On Christ the solid rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

…

When He shall come with trumpet sound

Oh may I then in Him be found

Dressed in his righteousness alone

Faultless to stand before the throne

On Christ the solid rock I stand

All other ground is sinking sand

My hope is built on nothing less

Than Jesus' blood and righteousness

*******

May God bless us all with HIS amazing love. May Jesus Christ our eternal Savior be ours! May we be resurrected on resurrection day- hopefully very soon. May we know that we have eternal life and continue to hope that all may know the same. May the God of love - unending love- all sacrificing love, be with us now and forever! Amen!!!!!!!

Psa 78:40  How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! 

Lam_3:33  For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men

Heb 12:9  Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? 

Heb 12:10  For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. 

Heb_4:15  For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.

Isa 53:3  He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 

Isa 53:4  Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. 

Luk 4:18  The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to… heal the brokenhearted…

2Ch 34:27  Because thine heart was tender, and thou didst humble thyself before God, when thou heardest his words against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, and humbledst thyself before me, and didst rend thy clothes, and weep before me; I have even heard thee also, saith the LORD. 

Psa 34:18  The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. 

Psa 51:17  The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

Psa 147:3  He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. 

Isa 57:15  For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite ones. 

Isa 66:2  For all those things hath mine hand made, and all those things have been, saith the LORD: but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.

Psa 147:3  He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds. 

2Co 7:6  Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down…

2Co 1:3  Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; 

2Co 1:4  Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. 

Jer 31:13  … I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow

Mat 5:4  Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted. 

Joh 14:16  And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you for ever

Rom 15:5  Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be likeminded one toward another according to Christ Jesus

Php 2:1  If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, 

Php 2:2  Fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind. 

2Th 2:16  Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God, even our Father, which hath loved us, and hath given us everlasting consolation and good hope through grace, 

2Th 2:17  Comfort your hearts, and stablish you in every good word and work