Grief as criticism…
Grief is the ultimate criticism of the Empire because it exposes the powers for what they truly are in reality. You can’t control grief and you can’t rationalize it away. It has the power to strip away all the pomp and circumstance surrounding life. To weep is to be alive, to feel, to see, to hear, to know. The prevailing wind in society would like you to think that life is all progress, promise, and ultimately prosperity. What grief tells you is that life will always include pain and ultimately end in death.
In the Kingdom those who truly embrace death are the ones that truly have hope! Weird, huh? By opening yourself to the pain and suffering of your brothers and sisters you are actually opening yourself to the hope and promise of the Resurrection! Our lives are devoid of hope and imagination because we have bought into the lie of the Empire that desires to perpetuate this life forever when God promises that this life will end. Only when we acknowledge that this life is temporary will we truly gain the life that Jesus desired for us; a life of abundance, purpose, hope, and meaning.
I write these things because I am trying to keep grief alive in my life. Weird, huh? I feel it wearing off as time goes by and it scares me. Suffering pushes you into the very depths of God and strips away all the pretension of life. I now realize that God allows suffering, in some ways, to give us the chance to truly live, to embody His heart on Earth, and to truly give us a desire for this new world that He promises us.
