Letting go of something (or particularly someone) is perhaps the most difficult crossroads we come to as human beings; the death of a loved one is by far the biggest challenge we’ll ever face in this life. Most statistics are in a state of flux, but not death: The deathrate is still one-per-person. We’ll all have a headstone one day that has a date of birth and a date of death.
As is true for most of you, I have “lost” far too many loved ones over the years, both family and friends.
Pondering the recent loss of two former beloved parishioners, as the Lord would have it, I “happened” to begin reading excerpts from the memoirs of revivalist Charles G. Finney (1792-1875) in which he wrote about the extreme affliction of mind and immeasurable grief he suffered over the loss of his first wife (Lydia).
Since so many of us have had to say farewell to loved ones within the past few years, I want to quote at length Finney’s account for he comes to a helpful conclusion of this unavoidable event. After speaking of his loss, Finney recounts:
“This was to me a great affliction. However, I did not feel any murmuring, or the least resistance to the will of God. I gave her up to God. Without any resistance whatever, that I can recollect. But it was to me a great sorrow. The night after she died, I was lying in my room alone, and some Christian friends were sitting up in the parlor and watching out the night. I had been asleep for a little while, and as I awoke, the thought of my bereavement flashed over my mind with such power! My wife was gone! I should never hear her speak again, nor see her face! Her children were motherless! What should I do? My brain seemed to reel, as if my mind would swing from its pivot. I rose instantly from my bed, exclaiming, ‘I shall be deranged if I cannot rest in God!’ The Lord soon calmed my mind, for that night; but still, at times, seasons of sorrow would come over me, that were almost overwhelming.
“One day I was upon my knees, communing with God on the subject, and all at once he seemed to say to me, ‘You loved your wife?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, did you love her for her own sake, or for your sake? Did you love her, or yourself? If you loved her for your own sake, why do you sorrow that she is with me? Should not her happiness with me make you rejoice instead of mourn, if you loved her for her own sake?
Did you love her,’ he seemed to say to me, ‘for my sake? If you loved her for my sake, surely you would not grieve that she is with me. Why do you think of your loss, and lay so much stress upon that, instead of thinking of her gain? Can you be sorrowful when she is so joyful and happy?’
“I can never describe the feelings that came over me, when I seemed to be thus addressed. It produced an instantaneous change in the whole state of my mind. From that moment, sorrow, on account of my loss, was gone forever. I no longer thought of my wife as dead, but as alive, and in the midst of the glories of heaven…”
While Finney’s words can be effectively applied to the loss of a spouse, the truths of what he writes have application for the loss of a believing son, daughter, parent, dear friend, etc. What Charles Finney testified to is true because it comes straight from Holy Scripture:
“I [Jesus] go to prepare a place for you…[Therefore] we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands…”
“We are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We live by faith not by sight. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” (John 14:2; 2 Corinthians 5:1,6-7)
My earnest prayer is that each of you that has lost a Christian loved one may be enabled, as was Charles Finney, to replace your grief with this wonderful thought: Your loved ones are, right now, in the very presence of God, healed, whole, and happy, awaiting your arrival! If you’ve trusted in Christ alone for your salvation, your ticket for the “soul train” has been purchased, paid for in full. Maranatha!