Guidance Through Mourning

1Sam16:1 - How long will you mourn for Saul?

    The world is not as it was created to be in the beginning; God's plan never included heartbreak, tragedy, loss or sorrow. Sorrow is a product of Adam’s sin; it is a product of our fallen condition and the current state of things. However, even though they were never part of God’s original intention for us, sorrow, loss and grief are some of the emotions that we will inevitably experience in this life and we must know how to navigate through them because the process of recovery is very important.

    God came to Samuel and asked him how long he was going to mourn. The mourning was not wrong. God knows that we must acknowledge loss and recognize grief if we are to overcome it. We must grieve appropriately. When we lose a loved one, we realize there must be a time of mourning. The mourning shows respect for the one you lost, it indicates the value that they held in your life. They were a vital and integral part of your life and now they are gone. There needs to be a process of coming to terms with the reality that life will never be the same. Change has come and we must move forward for there is a life to be lived and a destiny to fulfill. We sometimes feel guilty about moving on in life after the loss of someone so important and so very close to us. How can we be happy and still grieve the loss? There is a necessary thing called closure. A door unlocked is one thing but a door left half way open doesn’t seem right, especially if it’s your front door. One of the basic things we were taught as a child was to close the door on the way out. An old preacher once said that there are only two things that we do in life; we enter and we leave, and how you leave one place determines how you enter another. Seasons come and seasons go and we cannot grieve the loss of each season forever. There is a time of mourning and then there must be a time to accept the loss and adjust our thinking and renew our hope for the future. The mourning is necessary, the mourning is important, the mourning is real but, the mourning must eventually lose its paralyzing grip on us, otherwise, we will be held in the past forever.

    According to our verse, the time frame of mourning is somewhat in our control. How long it lasts may be determined by our choice. How long? Should we mourn for a month? Or should we mourn for a year? Is there a fixed amount of time that someone should mourn? No! Everyone is different and every situation and circumstance is also different. There are no formulas for mourning. Mourning is not mechanical, it is biological. It is organic, it is alive and it is a very personal process. We must walk through it step by step, trusting God to lead us into a place of healing and restored hope. We will know when the time is right.

    We should also realize that loss is experienced in many different ways. We do not always have to lose a loved one to experience loss. There are many other forms of loss which should also be grieved appropriately. There is the loss of employment which issues in many other challenges. There is the loss of friendship. There is the loss of innocence. There is the loss of a sense of destiny. Likewise we can lose the ability to dream. We can lose the ability to laugh. We can and do lose all kinds of things in life and we must acknowledge the loss, mourn accordingly and then move on.  If we do not recognize loss, we will never recognize the new things put in front of us. New opportunities await all of us but if we are stuck in the debilitating and overwhelming effects of sorrow we will not be able to see them when they come. 

    When we know that what we have lost was originally given by God it becomes harder to leave it in the past and go forward into our future. Saul was the man chosen by God but because of his choice he forfeited the honour of continuing as king. Many times we have difficulty with letting go of something that was initiated by God and was such a blessing to us. However, there are always going to be transitions; change inevitably comes; nothing in this life lasts forever. We intuitively know this but it is not easy to live out. A wonderful lady said to me once, when we were going through a very difficult season, that a big part of the role of a pastor or spiritual leader is to help people say hello and to say goodbye. That statement rings true to me. Just think of our lives; we say hello to elementary school and we say goodbye to it; we say hello to a job or career and we say goodbye to it; we say hello to our thirties and we say goodbye to them; we say hello to people we love and we say goodbye to them. That actually sums up our lives; we say hello to the world in birth and we say goodbye in death, and in between, there are many hellos and goodbyes.

    Life is a series of transactions and transitions; entrances and exits; beginnings and endings; saying hello and saying goodbye. Like a trapeze artist, there is a time to hang on and a time to let go, and the timing for each is all-important. Be encouraged, friend, you may feel alone and even lost, but, you are not. Take your time, we cannot force the process. Choose your counselors wisely and let your Heavenly Father wrap His arms around you. Let all the heaviness go and rest in His everlasting arms. He will guide through this season of life and His powerful grace will prevail. Amen!