Grief

It's strange the way grief hits you in waves. For much of the last 4 months since my Dad passed I have been so busy with my family and ministry to think much about the reality of losing him. It has probably helped that it wasn't abnormal to go several weeks in between phone calls and several months in between visits. So the trip to Guntersville this weekend was more difficult than I thought it would be.

Raw emotions, raw emotions, and more raw emotions...

I had changed out some CDs in my car before we left so that I would have some that were in the car with us for the trip. One that I had in the changer when I got back was Springsteen's Greatest Hits. The song Badlands has stuck in my head in a different way today with these lines,

I believe in the love that you gave me

I believe in the faith that could save me

I believe in the hope and I pray that someday it may raise me above these badlands...

If I had to express my thoughts on grief, suffering, and death it would be Badlands, a place of desperation, desolation, and in once sense hopelessness. As Christians of course, our hope is rooted in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, however that hope does NOT take away the feelings of pain and despair that accompany the loss of someone you love. But the lyrics are reminders that some day we will rise above these "badlands" and that the full power of the resurrection will be known to all of God's children who may mourn for tonight but trust that tomorrow will be a new day.

 

 

You Don't Have to Live Like a Refugee

Tom Petty
Refugee
Listen, it don't really matter to me
Baby, you believe what you wanna believe
You see, you don't have to live like a refugee

Somewhere, somehow, somebody must have
Kicked you around some
Tell me why you wanna lay there,
Revel in your abandon

Honey, it don't make no difference to me
Baby, everybody's had to fight to be free
You see, you don't have to live like a refugee
No baby, you don't have to live like a refugee

Tom Petty has always captured my attention with his barely whispered, gritty vocals and devil may care attitude. I was listening to one of his discs recently and this song stuck in my head for a few days. I couldn't move past the fact that as humans we choose to live like refugees when we live alienated from God and keep him at arms length. The good news of the gospel is a reminder that we don't have to revel in our brokenness and our sense of abandonment when the world casts us aside...truly we have the greatest hope, the greatest love, the deepest awareness of grace in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are declared righteous in God's sight no longer bound to flounder in chains of sin and death but liberated to live in community with God and his people.

Friendship

Stevie Ray Vaughn the legendary blues guitarist from Texas who rocked the music scene throughout the 80s with his gritty, soul-stirring, Texified version of classic blues and plenty of his original stuff. He has a song entitled "Life By the Drop" that is an acoustic, stripped down song compared to his other material. The song is a reflection of friendship that has been tried by distant, difficulties, and substance abuse. One of the lines always sticks with me...God it's good to be here walking together my friend. That line and the end of the song are filled with redemption and hope that leaves the listener thinking about his or her own friendships. I am always reminded of my best friend, who happens to be my beautiful wife and the friendship that blossomed and grew through all these years, nearly 12 that we've been together. In less than 48 hours we will be parents to not only one little girl but two. Our friendship often brings to mind this song lyric because there is no one I would rather be walking through life with than Cyd. The good, the bad, the funny, the sad, the joys of children, the heartache when they hurt...the times of stress when we are both exhausted but still have parental duties to do, the times that we can slip away for a few hours to enjoy each other and the love and friendship that God has blessed us with. There are many marriages in our world that are not based on friendship, which is why I am so thankful that mine is. I guess the warning sign was that we basically dated for about 6 months but we wouldn't call it that, we said we were "just friends."

This song also makes me cherish the times that I have with other friends and the situations that I get to walk alongside them with. Friends who are getting married, friends who are struggling with life and the situations that it has brought them, friends who hurt because other friends are hurting, friends who like us are celebrating life all over again, and friends who are just trying to make it day to day. Isn't that all that any of us can do? Our hope is in God to sustain us. The catch is he does it day by day not weekly or monthly. Remember the manna that God provided in the desert for Israel. It spoiled overnight so that they would learn to trust God to provide daily for their needs. Many of my friends and I are learning that art of trusting God daily...it's not easy, but "it's good to be walking together my friends."