It is a new year. You might be saying – oh, good, a new year. Do you hear the difference between that and Oh, Good! A New Year! There is a “yippee” after this second quote but not after the first. The first is said with a flat tone of voice. As a grieving parent, you might be speaking like the first quote.

It is a new year. For many, there is pain just turning over the calendar to a new number for the year. It means this is a year in which your child has not lived. I’m sorry for that extra dose of pain for you. You have probably heard it said that you have to seek and establish a “new normal” for your life now that he or she has died.

I want to share a couple verses from Ezekiel about newness that I have been pondering:
I will gather you from all the countries and bring you back into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. Then you will live in the land I gave your ancestors; you will be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:24-28)

Our God wants to bless you and me with a new heart! He wants to cleanse us. Since none of us is perfect yet, I am not shy about saying you, and I for sure, need to be cleansed from all our sin and idols. I/we need a softer heart, not a stony one.

Now, I want to be clear about this: I DO NOT believe that your stony heart is what motivated God to take your child! NO. But since we’re not perfect yet, there is bound to be some hardness of heart that needs to be softened and can be softened here in the grief that you’re experiencing. It’s not BECAUSE of hardness of heart that you’re here, but SINCE you’re here, God has intentions to cleanse and give you a new heart.

God’s work in your life is much bigger than the calendar. He wants to transform you into someone who is more and more like Jesus. The reason for His work in your life is for His reputation.

It is not for your sake, people of Israel, that I am going to do these things, but for the sake of my holy name. (Ezekiel 36:22 partial)

I know, it’s not about us. It’s about Him. But I take that to be a greater guarantee that this thing He has planned will, in fact, be done. Since it’s about Him and He will do it.

So, my greeting to you at the beginning of a new year is: Happy New Heart in the new year.
Blessings to you, in His grace.

Share:

Simeon is another of the important characters in the Christmas story from whom we can learn lessons that apply in grief. He was an old dude who loved the Lord and worshipped regularly. The Holy Spirit had revealed that he would see the Messiah before his death. So he was in the temple waiting. Then, when Joseph and Mary brought their new baby to the temple (to take care of the required rituals), Simeon immediately recognized Him for who He is! Simeon took Jesus in his arms and praised God! “My eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared..: a light for revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel.” Simeon blessed the parents and the Child, and mentioned to the Lord that it would be ok to go ahead and die since he’s now seen the promised Messiah. That was all he needed. (Luke 2:22-35)

Simeon heard God’s promise. He waited and waited expectantly. He worshipped during the waiting years!! And he was rewarded with seeing and holding the Messiah.

Let’s look at some parallels with your lives. God has made some promises to you. God is Love. He says He controls all things. He is good all the time. Do you hear the promises? And yet your child died. Can you wait until He clears up this mystery that all these things can be true at the same time? Do you expect Him to help you understand any of it? Can you worship Him in the meantime? No matter how long that might take? For Simeon and for many other biblical characters, they might not have received direct answers but they got to know God more intimately. Simeon met face to face with the promised Messiah. The Messiah wants to be intimate with you too. If you see Him, will you recognize Him? Simeon kept himself ready all the time. Would it be comforting if you did see Him that intimately? Would it be enough? It was for Simeon. He was ready to die after this. Life was complete.

What about you? Can you wait? Can you expect Him to enter into your grief and confusion? To enter in with comfort and maybe even some understanding? Can you worship anyway until some of that comes?

The Messiah has come into human history, but he will make his presence known to you individually because he promises to be with you on your journey through the valley of the shadow. The Messiah came with a purpose – to reveal Himself to Gentiles as well as to Israel. Because He was born, He could accomplish His full plan to redeem us and open the gates of heaven for us. Because He was born, you have the hope that your child is safe and happy in heaven. Because He was born, you can look forward to being with Jesus and your child too, if you listen to the promises and wait expectantly and worship in the meantime. Simeon felt life was complete. May the coming of Jesus the Messiah give you comfort too until you see Him face to face.

Share:

Joseph was betrothed to a lovely godly young girl. Then he received some earthshaking news: she was found to be pregnant! Since Joseph “was faithful to the law,” he dutifully planned to “divorce” her – i.e. end the commitment to live the rest of their lives together. Thoughtfully, he “did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.” But an angel came to him and told him what was happening, that it was all part of God’s plan. He was convinced to stay in the relationship with Mary. “Convinced” is a strong word, yet it does describe Joseph’s change of heart toward this whole situation.

The baby was born, as the angel had told Joseph. They called his name Jesus, as the angel told them to do. “When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.” (from Matthew 1:18-25)

This is Joseph’s side of the Christmas story. He was in love, stunned, disappointed and ashamed, decisive, committed to God’s rule of law but still careful to not cause undue pain for anyone else. Then he was met by God’s appointed messenger, the angel. After that, he obeyed what he knew even if he didn’t know everything he wanted to know. He obeyed what he did know – he kept Mary as his wife and he named the baby boy Jesus. “He did what the angel… had commanded.”

Dads, there are several parallels with your experience here. You loved your child and your wife too. You were stunned by some news about your child’s diagnosis or about an accident or about his unexpected death. You’ve probably been disappointed in … maybe many things or people, maybe God too. You may have tried to be a godly man, never wanting to cause undue pain, to be faithful to the people God has called you to, such as your wife and kids. For Joseph, there were things he didn’t really understand – the pregnancy? God’s purpose? Why him and Mary? Maybe for you too, there are things you don’t quite understand.

Joseph had a visit from an angel and trusted God. Then He did what he knew to do, obey what he’d been told. What about you? Most of you haven’t had an actual visit from an angel, but you do have something very important: the Word of God. Like the angel, it carries a message to you. It says God loves you, is present with you, helps you, has a plan for good for you in His kingdom. Can you trust God? He is worthy of trust, so trust Him. Do what you know now to do, whatever that is. Follow Him. You may not know the whole story, but you know enough to do what you’ve been instructed. Just a few of the general commands: trust, obey, be faithful to one wife, rejoice in all circumstances, consider trials gifts from God, pray without ceasing.

You don’t know the whole story or how all the pieces fit together, but you do know God loves you and loves your child. You do know God has a plan in motion to redeem His people and His purpose and that you fit into all that. You do know God promises to be present with you through the toughest places in life, like this one. Be encouraged to do what you know and have been commanded to do. It worked for Joseph. The same God is at work in your life too.

Share:

 But when the time arrived that was set by God the Father, God sent his Son, born among us of a woman, born under the conditions of the law so that he might redeem those of us who have been kidnapped by the law. Galatians 4:4-5 The Message

When we think of Christmas, we generally focus on the fact that God came. Jesus, the Son of God, was born. However the other side of this event is this: God Sent. Think about those words. They tell us there was a plan in God’s mind. They tell us God took initiative to activate the plan. They tell us that this sending created a distance between Father and Son. The Two, who had been eternally in each other’s presence, would be separated.

Did God the Father feel the separation and longing? I think so. Did God the Son feel it? I know so. You can see it whenever Jesus goes off to some lonely place to pray. He longs for the communion and intimacy He had with His Father in eternity before, and has again in eternity now. But during His time living on earth, the Son and the Father were living in totally different places. The Father was in heaven among angels, the Son was among men. They were separated by a very great distance.

Because of the death of your child, you know something about a separation of parent from child. You know there is great pain in this separation. Pain and longing and sadness. Would you choose this separation? I’ll venture to say your answer would be NO Thank You. But God the Father, voluntarily and for a purpose developed in His own mind, said YES. “Son,” He said, “Go,” because He wanted to accomplish what the rest of the verse says: to redeem those who were captured by sin and the law. That’s you and me, by the way.

God, the Father, sent His Son, away from their home and eternal fellowship, to go to earth, to be born as a baby. You know the earthly side of the story: Mary and Joseph in a barn, shepherds, angels, wise men, old people waiting in the temple. The heavenly side of this story is that God sent His Son away to a different place to live separately, to reveal God’s character and plan.

The Father was motivated to take this action so that right now, in your separation, you can believe there is hope. The hope is based on 2 things:

• the Father is familiar with the pain of separation
• the reunion we’ll experience in the redemption He accomplished. Because of the redemption in the verse, you as a sinner and your child as a sinner can be reunited in His presence.

Thanks be to God for the hope of the resurrection. That hope, which is yours now, was born on Christmas morning as the Father sent His Son for you.

Share: