During times of grief

Lutheran, The, Jul 2003 by Thompson, Robert R

Visitations by God come in the ordinary and familiar

The loss of a child rips and tears at the soul like a ravenous beast. The pure pain of the death, the unreality of the funeral experience, and the mental and physical suffering that stays with you precludes any thought of what the death means in terms of faith and worship-even how one regards God.

Theology wasn't an issue for us when our 18-year-old son was killed in an auto accident. I wasn't looking for answers to "Why?" My wife and I were looking, at first, for peace and respite and sleep that would not come.

But God came to us.

The first visitation came not from a vision, burning bush or a message inscribed with words of wisdom and prophecy. The first visitation came from God's earthly angels-in our case, the parishioners of our congregation. They came-friends and fellow worshipers-bringing casserole dishes and words of shared sorrow.

Some shared our grief so profoundly they couldn't speak at all, but merely collapsed in our arms with their hugs. They walked with us, talked with us, cried with us. They listened, they prayed, they held us. They didn't know they had been sent by God as agents of comfort.

The second visitation from God came during the funeral service-congregational, liturgical and scriptural. From the Lutheran Book of Worship:

"O God our Father, your beloved Son took children into his arms and blessed them. Give us grace, we pray, that we may entrust our son to your never-failing care and love, and bring us all to your heavenly kingdom; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.

"In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord, Jesus Christ, we commend to almighty God our son and we commit his body to its resting place. ... We commend our brother and son to the Lord: May the Lord receive him into his peace and raise him up on the last day."

We found what inspiration there was to find at that time in "the sure and certain hope of the resurrection."

The words of the familiar hymn "Children of the Heavenly Father" (LBW 414) comforted too:

"God his own doth tend and nourish. In his holy courts they flourish. From all evil things he spares them. In his mighty arms he bears them.

"Though he giveth or he taketh, God his children, ne'er forsaketh; His the loving purpose solely to preserve them pure and holy."

Then it was over. The shock, the comfort, the funeral. And the mourners are left alone with the burden of their grief and sorrow. Only then was I ready to ask my questions, was I ready for God's answers.

Some say they find God in the midst of the golf course, early on a Sunday morning. Others say they find God in the calm sunset over a northern lake. Or as they walk along the beach or through the woods.

For me the third visitation came back at church in the Sundays after the funeral, in the continuation of congregational, liturgical and scriptural life. And in the words from the pulpit: Not as answers to weighty theological problems or nuances of biblical detail-but through steady, reassuring promises that slowly began to heal my wounded spirit. Scripture and sermons took on new meanings for us as our sensitivities and awareness of the sufferings of others were heightened.

We heard John 3:16 in a new way: "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life." It made us truly feel the anguish that God must have felt as Jesus hung on the cross.

We empathized for and grieved with others when they suffered losses. The prayers that were offered up for them from the congregation touched our hearts in new ways.

The last visitation from God came to me through those in the wider circle of Christians-fellow sufferers in The Compassionate Friends, other grieving parents who shared their experiences and authors like counselor Adolfo Quezada, who wrote: "You have gone beyond the reach of my senses only to return to the core of my being. Now we will be together for ever and ever. Good-bye, my son, hello" (Good-bye, My Son, Hello; Abbey Press, 1985).

Gradually the answers to my questions came from God through all these visitations. God doesn't cause our suffering. God doesn't cause disease, depression or accidents.

We live in a world regulated by physical and immutable laws on which we all, and the universe, depend. Laws of cellular biology, brain chemistry and gravity. God gave us these laws that we might have life, not death. But another law is that whatever lives must eventually die.

When lives are lost, God grieves with us. And then God sustains us with visits and gifts through trusted and loving resources. Far from abandoning us, God is there for us. God comes to us daily in ways so familiar that we may not recognize them as God-sent. Constantly, we are upheld in God's steadfast love.

Thompson, who spent 30 years as a rural family physician and served as a hospice consultant, is a member of United-Redeemer Lutheran Church, Zumbrota, Minn. He is the author of Remembering: The Death of a Child (Sugarloaf Publishing House, 2002; www.sugarloafpublishing.com).