• Scripture

    Your Redeemer Will Keep You—Part 1

    June 13, 2019

    After presenting the following at a Bible study last week, I’ve had several requests to make it available. For that reason, and because it does reach into the realm of loss and death, I’ve decided to post it here. Please read with its original audience (a women’s Bible study at a Baptist church) in mind.

    The book of Ruth is named after a woman who played an important role in the history of redemption, and bringing about the Redeemer. 

    But the first chapter of the book spends most of its time telling us about her mother-in-law, Naomi. This chapter provides the foundation for the rest of the book so that we can see God’s provision—not just for Naomi, but for his chosen people, as the promises that he made to Abraham in Genesis 15 slowly come into fulfillment. 

    I’ve titled my lesson for Chapter 1 “Your Redeemer Will Keep You,” because in this chapter we are given a peek behind the curtains so that we can see God caring for Naomi in the midst of, and despite, her failures and disappointments.

    All of this fulfillment could appear unlikely, though, at the end of Chapter 1. By the time we reach the end of the chapter, Naomi has given herself a new name. She no longer wants to be called by Naomi, the name that means “pleasant,” but by the name “Mara,” which means “bitter.” If we’re reading the Old Testament from start to finish, we might notice that this is not the first time that someone has undergone a name change. One notable re-naming happened in Genesis 17. There God renames Abram “Abraham” and his wife Sarai, “Sarah”[1]when he renews the covenant with Abraham, promising him a great nation to be birthed through his offspring. From this point on, we don’t read of Abram and Sarai, but of Abraham and Sarah.

    In contrast, it is not God who renames Naomi, but rather she re-names herself. The reason, it seems, is that rather than fulfilling his covenant through her, she says in verse 21, “The LORD has testified against me and the Almighty has brought calamity upon me.”[2]She is so convinced that her suffering is a sign that God did not care for her, that it was an exclusion from the covenant promises, that she takes a new name.

    So—what had happened to Naomi between Verse 1 and Verse 20 that could so traumatize her that she felt like she needed to change her name? Let’s circle back to the beginning of the chapter and work our way through from start to finish to see how Naomi came to change her name at the end of the chapter. I’ve broken the chapter into four sections that you can trace along with me.

    1. Naomi’s Emptiness, 1:1–5
    2. Naomi’s Breaking Point, 1:6–13
    3. The Redeemer Breaks Through, 1:14–18.
    4. Naomi Is Kept by Her Redeemer Ruth 1:19–22. 

    I promise, though, that we will not spend the whole morning talking about Naomi’s hard times. We will also see two ways that God is hinting at how he will fulfill his promise of a Redeemer, for both Naomi specifically, and Israel as a nation, and even us.

    Naomi’s Emptiness (1:1–5)

    We can see pretty clearly what happened to Naomi in the first five verses of Chapter 1, where the author provides the setting for the story. In these verses, the narrator spells out three reasons Naomi might have reached the point of despair that would cause her to want to give herself the name Mara. Here are the three that I think the text indicates, and these are all part of the first section, which I’m calling “Naomi’s Emptiness”: (Sidenote: Watch these themes throughout the book, and see how God works in all three of these areas)

    1. An Empty Belly, or Exile
    2. An Empty Throne
    3. An Empty Womb

    We only have to look as far as the first verse to find the first two: Ruth 1:1

    “In the days when the judges ruled there was a famine in the land, and a man of Bethlehem in Judah went to sojourn in the country of Moab, he and his wife and his two sons.” 

    Naomi’s first, and broadest challenge is indicated in the very first clause of the very first sentence of Ruth, where we are told that Naomi and her family lived in the time of the judges. This means there was an empty throne. This was the time in Jewish history that came after the Egyptian slavery and Exodus, and the conquest, and most importantly for our story, during the years before Israel had a king. The last verse of the book of Judges, Judges 22:25, which comes right before Ruth in our Old Testament, describes this period concisely, and hints at why this was a problem and trial for Naomi: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” 

    Instead of the eternal kingdom promised to Abraham, chaos, war, and disobedience ruled the land that was meant to be Jacob’s birthright. The book of Judges is full of stories of violence and ungodliness even among the judges who were often used by God to pursue justice in and for Israel among the surrounding nations. If you read Jason DeRouchie’s “Invitation to Ruth” in the study guide, you can see just how hard the times were, especially for women—fathers allowing their daughters to be harmed, husbands, judges, even, causing the violent death of their wives, women raped, murdered, and story after story of sinful violence. This was a time when Israel, and therefore Elimilech and Naomi, were experiencing the curse God had promised if they disobeyed the law he had given them.

    God’s covenant with Abraham had not yet been fulfilled. God had promised that Abraham’s descendants would be blessed themselves, and that they would be a blessing to those around them. But clearly, the land and its people were not blessed themselves, and they likewise were not being a blessing to the nations around them. There was no king in Israel who could lead the nation in worshipping God, pursuing justice, and blessing the nations. Soon after Ruth’s time, possibly even during her life, the people’s suffering was so great they were begging God for a king— a ruler to fill an empty throne.

    Another reason Naomi might have had to doubt the faithfulness and love of God came in the form of a famine in her hometown. She and her family had empty bellies.

    Bethlehem—the town literally named for bread and food, located in what my ESV study notes call a “fertile region”—did not have enough food! Thus, Naomi and her husband Elimilech were not able to provide for their sons. She and her family experienced hunger. Her family’s hunger led them to leave the land that had been promised to Abraham generations before, and go to a land where YAHWEH was not worshipped. What a disappointment! Elimilech and Naomi were exiled through famine from the land that had been promised to them. How could they take part in the promises of God, if they were moved away from the land that was so intricately tied to God’s covenant with Abraham?

    Naomi’s third problem was an empty womb.

    The narrator describes Naomi’s family and origin not once, but twice. They were from the tribe of Judah, from Bethlehem. In repeating himself in verses 1 and 2, he makes clear that Naomi’s family line was very important to the story of redemption that had been promised. The Messiah was to come from the line of Judah, and, specifically, from Bethlehem. Naomi had reason to hope, then, that her sons, from the fullness of her womb, would be involved in the fulfillment of covenant and prophesy.  

    But verses 3–5 shows the destruction of that hope. First, Naomi’s husband died. Sad as that may have been, Naomi was still able to hope in her sons’ future. But in a devastating blow, both of her sons died childless after marrying Moabite women. Naomi was left alone. She had neither an heir, nor a provider. As a woman in ancient near east society she was utterly destitute without male family members. In the darkness of this grief, the promises of God must have felt incredibly far-fetched, and the likeliness of God’s provision for her and his faithfulness to fulfill his covenant must have seemed so far away. Her grief must have been, understandably, deep, and dark. 

    These losses seem to have been a breaking point for Naomi, and we can see this clearly exhibited in the next section, verses 6–13. I’ll post this section, which I called “Naomi’s Breaking Point” soon. Watch for it, and feel free to subscribe so you can be notified when it’s up.

    [1]Gen 17:5

    [2]Ru 1:21

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  • Book Reviews,  Books,  Death and Dying

    Book Review: The Art of Dying

    April 30, 2019

    Anyone reading this review probably knows what this blog is about: death, dying, and the Christian. So it will be no surprise to you that my favorite book of the year so far is a book about just that. The Art of Dying: Living Fully Into the Life to Come by Rob Moll is a book that I’ve been telling people I wish I had written. I found myself either nodding in agreement with the author on topics I’ve already come to conclusions on, or totally engrossed as I learned new information. It’s a book I fully intend to buy and give away. I think everyone should read it. 

    Now, if that glowing recommendation alone doesn’t convince you to read it, I guess I will have to endeavor to entice you with a little more information.

    Rob Moll is a journalist, formerly editor-at-large at Christianity Today. Inspired, at least in part, by the story of Terry Schiavo, he wrote The Art of Dying because of an awareness that Christians, surprisingly, did not seem to have an appropriate response to questions of life and death. More particularly, they did not appear to have a set of ethics or principles, informed by their faith, that could adequately inform their decisions regarding death—their own or a loved one’s. His argument is that Christians, like the rest of our Western culture, wrongly avoid all thought of death. “Death is indeed evil.” He says, “Yet there is no evil so great that God cannot bring joy and goodness from it. That is why death deserves our attention in life. Because we want to avoid it, to turn our face away, it is good to look death in the eye and constantly remind ourselves that our hope is in God, who defeated death.” His goal, it seems, is to offer a deeply Christian understanding of death as both encouragement and corrective. I think he succeeds.

    The first few chapters of the book articulate our current problem of avoiding death in our daily lives, as well as the medicalization of death—a sort of “how we got here” look at our current state. He then explains what has been lost in our Christian traditions surrounding death by giving a brief and broad history of Christian death up through the end of the 19thcentury. Leading his readers gently toward the boots-on-the-ground questions about death and dying, he includes a chapter entitled “The Spirituality of Death,” making a convincing argument for why death is a monumental occasion in the life of a believer, requiring preparation. Moll then takes his reader through the dying process from start to finish, answering practical questions interspersed with interviews and personal stories related to preparing for your own or your parents’ death, caring for dying people, questions of funeral practices and traditions. He ends the book with chapters on grief, the resurrection, and what understanding death means for life. 

    Every chapter of this book has the potential to be life-changing for someone. There were several things, though, that come to mind from this book without even having to skim the pages. I’ll try to share them, briefly, with you here. 

    • The first was the effect of death on a community. Moll shares that as we lost the traditions of mourning, grief has become more and more isolating. By marking houses and clothes with signs of mourning, the community helped bear the weight of grief. Describing C.S. Lewis’ experience of isolation described in A Grief Observed, Moll says “As if the burdens of the griever weren’t enough, society gave Lewis another responsibility—the cruel job of forcing a man in mourning to help those around him feel better about their awkwardness in his presence” (129). This resonates with me, and makes me wonder what sort of steps I can take to ease this load off of the grieving around me. Along with this, I was so glad to read Moll’s exhortation to not use the hope of resurrection as a bludgeon to those in the midst of grief: “those in mourning and their comforters may make grieving more difficult when our Christian hope is used to discourage public mourning” (131).
    • Secondly, I noticed lack of training in seminaries and the overall neglect of the elderly in churches. I know my church tries to care for the widows and the elderly, and as far as I know they do okay at it. I also know that it’s one of the quietest ministries in the church. Along with caring for the elderly better in life, I wonder if we should somehow try to bring the “business” of death back to our churches—can we recruit any seminarians to become funeral directors, or church-based morticians?   
    • Third, I was struck by his accounts of supernatural experiences as the hour of death approaches. I was convinced that we have over-medicalized death before reading The Art of Dying, mostly for practical reasons. But reading his numerous accounts of people being guided from this life to the next by spiritual beings has made me even more convinced. Moll says of previous periods of Christian history that “No one assumed that the difficult physical work of dying would leave a person spiritually unable to participate” (62). It seems clear to me that, whenever possible, we should not rob people of the spiritual experience of dying. Moll argues that this is not just for their benefit, but for ours: “Even Alzheimer’s can’t touch the life of the spirit. When a dying person gives physical evidence that his or her spirit is entering a new life, it can be spiritually encouraging to onlookers and emotionally comforting to those who will grieve the loss of the person. And as we support the dying spiritually, we help them to die well” (72).

    Aside from loving the content, I loved the structure of Moll’s book. It seemed very well suited to convince the reader that there is a problem, provide its context, and then offer a solution—or at least a launching point for better thought and practice. And I know I’m maybe hyper-aware, but I see such a great need for resources like this that I’m very grateful to have read it. I think you will be too.

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  • Books,  Death and Dying

    Lots and Lots of Books

    April 24, 2019

    Curious what books I’m reading?

    For those of you who are interested or want to read along with me, I’ve added my reading list under the “Resource” tab on the home page.

    Or, you can just follow this link.

    I’d love more suggestions! Let me know if you can think of books (or other media) I should add.

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  • Scripture

    Man of Sorrows, Man of Dust

    April 18, 2019

    We’ve had a lot of time to think about dust and ash this week, haven’t we? The great loss at Notre Dame de Paris, the hours of televised burning and a centuries-old building turning to ash, is a good reason to think about dust and ashes. And then here we are in Holy Week. This is the week where we Christians remember the death of our embodied God, and celebrate his wondrous resurrection.

    Holy Week provides us with the perfect opportunity to examine and meditate on just what it means for us to be made of dust. Not in a biological and physical way, but what it should mean to us in a spiritual, emotional way. It’s a chance for us to understand what it means for our daily life.

    Jesus was, after all, man. Jesus, the everlasting Word, who separated light from dark, land from sea, and created every sentient and non-sentient thing, become flesh. He became dust. 

    And this is what we remember on Good Friday. We remember Philippians 2: 

    “…though [Christ] was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow…and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”


    In this, Christ is an example for every human who ever has or ever will walk the face of the planet. He emptied himself of his divine form (note: I do not mean that he emptied himself of his divinity, but merely the form) and took the form of a man of dust. And as a man of dust, what was his posture? He was humble. He was obedient. He was the supreme example of how dust-made man should relate to God.

    Jesus stands in contrast to the Israelites when they worshipped the dusty work of their own dusty hands, to the citizens of Babel when they sought to a name for themselves and chose to protect themselves with dust-made bricks of dust instead of trusting God, and to Pharaoh, when he stood in rebellion to God, sought equality with God, and refused to bend his knee to his power. Jesus was not defiant in his human frailty, but humbly trusted himself to the will of his Father (Luke 22:42). Abraham, Job, and Hannah show us how this sort of humility looks in the lives of humans who were made in God’s image but had no divine form to give up. They did not strive for positioning with God, or defy him, but were comforted by him in their dusty humanity, recognizing that their frailty was paired with the possibility of near relationship with their creator. They relied on him, not themselves, and humbled themselves to his power over life and death. And, though they were not brought into the glory that only belongs to Christ, they were met by God and drawn into near relationship with him. Their responses to being made of dust then, were appropriate, and they mirrored Christ’s.

    So let’s linger with this thought for the last few days of Holy Week. Let’s remember Christ’s humility in taking the form of a man of dust. Can you believe it? That he would not only take on the form of a servant, but take his obedience even to the point that he would die, like every other man? And let’s mourn that it was our sin that made it necessary for him to humble himself to this point. He did not deserve to be degraded to the point of becoming a man of dust, taking it on so completely that he would die. Man of Sorrows, indeed. 

    He became dust. Willingly. Intentionally. Lovingly.

    But Hallelujah, what a Savior! It wasn’t the end of his story.

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  • Books,  Death and Dying

    Powerlessness and Freedom

    April 6, 2019

    One of the worst feelings I remember associated with miscarriage is the feeling of powerlessness. There’s no way around the horror of miscarriage, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. You are stuck with only one outcome. No creative thinking, no dedication to finding a different solution, no hard work or pleading for an exception will change the fact that your baby has died and your body can’t (and shouldn’t) hang on to the pregnancy.

    This feeling of powerlessness is probably familiar to anyone who has lost someone. I’m not qualified to say for sure, but if I had to guess that’s where the “Anger” stage of grief comes from. We face the inevitability of death, and realizing that we’re powerless to stop it triggers anger. It’s scary to face a threat you cannot match.

    Henri Nouwen talks about this feeling in A Letter of Consolation. He speaks of how even if you think you’re confronting death by planning for it, etc., there’s still something that throws you off-balance when you lose someone you love dearly. “Whatever we felt, said, or thought about death in the past was always within the reach of our own emotional or intellectual capacities. In a certain sense, it remained within the range of our own influence, or control. …But mother’s death was totally outside the field of our control or influence. It left us powerless. When we saw how slowly she lost contact with us and fell away from us, we could do nothing but stand beside her bed and watch death exercise its ruthless power. This experience is not an experience for which we can really prepare ourselves. It is so new and so overpowering that all of our previous speculations and reflections seem trivial and superficial in the presence of the awesome reality of death” (40).

    And here, in this discussion of powerlessness, he delves into one of my favorite topics—”befriending death.”

    He says that this powerlessness leads us to ask new questions about death, “open[ing] to us levels of life that could not have been reached before, even if we had had the desire to reach them” (40). This powerlessness makes us look back, reflect on our memories and realize how short time was. The coming and going of events was always moving forward toward this moment of death. I love this part: 

    “I think that from the point of view of mother’s death and our own mortality, we can now see our lives as a long process of mortification…It sounds unpleasant and harsh, and moralistic. But mortification—literally, “making death”—is what life is all about, a slow discovery of the mortality of it all that is created so that we can appreciate its beauty without clinging to it as if it were a lasting possession. Our lives can indeed be seen as a process of becoming familiar with death… I do not mean this in a morbid way. On the contrary, when we see life constantly relativized by death, we can enjoy it for what it is: a free gift” (42).

    Is this not true? Life is beautiful! And how do we know this? By seeing the horror of death. We ought to avoid death for its horror, but befriend it for stripping away any doubts of what is good.

    Nouwen speaks of reminiscing after his mother’s death—encouraging his father to look through old photos, of their early years, the years of vacations, raising Henri, and seeing him leave the next. “All these times have passed by like friendly visitors,” he says, “leaving you with dear memories but also with the sad recognition of the shortness of life. In every arrival there is a leave-taking; in every reunion there is a separation; in each one’s growing up there is a growing old; in every smile there is a tear; and in every success there is a loss. All living is dying and all celebration is mortification too” (43).

    This brings us back to powerlessness. Realizing that all of life is mortification doesn’t feel good. All of the autonomy we might have thought we had goes right down the drain. Nouwen posits that this moment brings us to “the great paradox in life.” The choice is to give up autonomy, to be controlled by grief and loss and stop living in the future but continue on in the past. A more “human” move of even greater autonomy, is to “be so in control that we can surrender ourselves” (49). To what? To “an unknown future” (51).   

    This, he says, is taking the “option to understand our experience of powerlessness as an experience of being guided, even when we do not know exactly where” (51). Nouwen uses the apostle Peter as an example, to whom Jesus said first “feed my sheep” three times, and then reminded him that age brings autonomy, and then dependence. “..a growing surrender to the unknown is a sign of spiritual maturity,” Nouwen says, and this “does not take away autonomy” (52).

    It’s unbelievable, really, when you think of it—death as a means of new life. We see it on the grandest scale in the story of Christ’s death and resurrection buying new, eternal, life for his people. But Nouwen brings us down to a little, physical, perhaps earth-bound parable of Christ’s death, reminding us that the apostles could not fulfill their vocation until after Christ’s death. 

    And in that way, this redeems the feeling of powerlessness when you lose someone. Powerlessness does not have to be a terminal destination, but a launching point. It can be an invitation to freely give up your attachment to transient things, and move just as freely into new spaces, to invest in people in a new, more abandoned way. When we are not bothered by pretending or hoping to be immortal, we are free to experience and pursue new depths of life that we may never have thought possible. 

    We also gain freedom by resting in the one who is not powerless in the face of death! I’m reminded of Augustine’s City of God. In the very center of this massive work Augustine zeroes in on the power of Christ in his incarnation and resurrection (I’ll have to find the reference later—my copy is in the room with a napping baby). There are other immortal beings (angels, demons), but none are a suitable mediator for man because they either do not want to help (demons), or are unable because they have nothing in common with us (angels) by which to mediate. Jesus alone, the immortal and blessed one, had the incomprehensible power to both take on mortality andbreak the power of death.

    If we rest in that power, we have no need to cling to our own. We can walk willingly toward our own demise, and that of those we love, without anxiety or regret, loving life all the more for knowing the one who, by his own power, won victory over death.

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  • Death and Dying,  Scholarship,  Scripture

    Flipping the Script: A Reflection on Hannah’s Song

    April 3, 2019

    One of my favorite parts of my thesis was the section on Hannah. Hannah’s prayer was one of the last places I would have expected to find insight on the use of dust and ashes in scripture, but it turned out that her story held one of the most personally meaningful bits of truth for me.

    Hannah’s story is perhaps one of the most well known among women in the Bible. She is often compared to Mary, and her song in 1 Samuel to Mary’s, the Magnificat. When the author of 1 Samuel introduces us to Hannah, she is the beloved but barren wife second wife, suffering at the hand of her husband’s other wife. She cried to God at the temple, desperate with sorrow and grief and unmet desire, promising to give her son wholly to God if God would just allow her to bear one. Her infertility was a window into the weakness of human bodies. Eventually, God answered her prayer, and she was given conception, and a son full of life and health. And then we see that the suffering was not over—in fact she has signed herself up for a sort of life-long suffering by promising to give her son up as a gift to the God who gives and takes life.

    What is amazing to me about Hannah is not just that she faithfully acted on her promise to God, but that her song after leaving her young son at the temple is a song of praise. Her song is full of images of dust and rocks, which is how I got there, but in it she does not focus on man’s frailty as a detriment, but flips the script. Instead of being sad and intimidated by the frailty of man, she uses human weakness as a launching point to remind her of man’s creation from dust. The result of her meditation on man’s frailty is not further despair, but praise. 

    This praise came in the face of not just leaving her only, much sought-after son, but leaving him in what could have been an unsafe place. The author of 1 Samuel calls Samuel’s new companions, Eli’s sons, “worthless men.” (1 Sam 3:1). It seems likely that Hannah would have known the character of the men she was leaving Samuel with, which makes her prayer striking. She sang a song of praise. This sets her apart—my instinct as a mother would, short of a miracle of faith, notbe praise at that point. But Hannah had faith, and she sang a song of joy. And the reason for her joy, surprisingly, is closely tied to man’s dusty origin.

    “He raises the poor from the dust;” she says, “he lifts the needy from the ash heap.” Her words are reminiscent of both Abraham, who states that he was “but dust and ashes” (Gen 18:27), and Job, who said, by one translation, that he was “comforted in dust and ashes” (Job 42:6). Both of these men, in their acknowledgement of their relation to dust, turned to God and were comforted.

    These examples make Hannah’s choices of imagery in her song stand out. She praises God as the one who “raises up the poor from the dust,” and “lifts the needy from the ash heap” (1 Sam 2:8). She knows that she is dust, drawn up and formed by her Creator. And just as she did in her years of infertility, she runs toward God, trusting him to “guard the feet of his faithful ones.” Not only did she trust God to protect her and her son, but because of his history of protecting and raising up the weak, but the same image gave her comfort that the wicked would be powerless over her son. The worthless men who had power over her son are also dust.

    And there is one more reason why she can praise God as she is separated from her precious son. Her God is not like man. He is not dust! He is a Rock. Firm. Unmovable. Infinitely stronger than the wicked men who are made of dust. 

    Not only is he not dust, he is the Creator. Hannah praises God because of his power over the life of his creation: “The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up…” Hannah reminds herself that even though the men with whom she has left her son are not good men, it is not they who are in control. The God who created them is. In the midst of what I can only guess must have been incredible grief at leaving her son behind, she joyfully turns to God—“for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and on them he has set the world.” Her rest is in the fact that the Creator God has power over life and death, that he “will guard the feet of his faithful ones”—including her son. 

    What a good lesson that is for us! Are our hearts and minds bent toward praise when we’re experiencing loss, or being confronted with the frailty of our bodies? Have we trained our minds to look to him with praise when we our bodies, or our loved ones bodies are returned to dust? I’m not, usually. But Hannah sets a good example for us. Maybe we should teach ourselves to sing with her when we are reminded of our own frailty as dust-made and dust-bound creatures. Maybe, like Hannah, we should gladly remember that yes, we are dust, because it reminds us that our God is not. We can praise God that even though we are weak, we are hidden, protected in the cleft of the Rock—the one to whom belong the foundations of the world.

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  • Books,  Death and Dying,  Grief

    “A Letter of Consolation:” An Introduction

    March 17, 2019

    The first book I read after I finished my MA program was A Letter of Consolation, by Henri Nouwen (no, I still don’t know how to pronounce his name).

    The book is a published version of a letter that he wrote to his father six months or so after the death of his mother, about their shared grief. It’s a moving book, and a helpful one. Also, notably, it’s short. My copy is only about a hundred pages, with large font and wide margins.

    After reading through it once, my copy is full of underlining and marginalia. He said a lot of things I have either thought before or experienced but have never thought coherently or put into words. Things like: 

    “Real grief is not healed by time. It is false to think that the passing of time will slowly make us forget her and take away our pain. I really want to console you in this letter, but not by suggesting that time will take away your pain…I would not only be telling a lie, I would be diminishing the importance of mother’s life, underestimating the depth of your grief, and mistakenly revitalizing the power of love that has bound mother and you together for forty-seven years. If time does anything it deepens our grief. The longer we live, the more fully we become aware of who she was for us, and the more intimately we experience what her love meant for us. Real deep love is…very unobtrusive, seemingly easy and obvious, and so present that we take it for granted. Therefore it is often only in retrospect—or better, in memory—that we fully realize its power and depth. Yes, indeed, love often makes itself visible in pain.”

    p 16

    And: 

    “The same love that forms the basis of our grief is also the basis of our hope; the same love that makes us cry out in pain also must enable us to develop a liberating intimacy with our own most basic brokenness. Without faith, this must sound like a contradiction. But our faith in him whose love overcame death and who rose from the grave on third day converts this contradiction into a paradox, the most healing paradox of our existence.”

    p 33–34

    And:

    “Death indeed simplifies; death does not tolerate endless shadings and nuances. Death lays bare what really matters, and in this way becomes your judge…Long-forgotten events [return] to memory as if they had taken place only recently. It seems as if we could put our whole lives in the palms of our hands like small precious stones and gaze at them with tenderness and admiration. How tiny, how beautiful, how valuable!”

    p 41–42

    And this one too:

    “What makes you and me Christians is not only our belief that he who was without sin died for our sake on the cross and thus opened for us the way to his Heavenly Father, but also that through his death our death is transformed from a totally absurd end of all that gives life meaning into an event that liberates us and those whom we love… [Mother’s death] is an event that allows her altruism to yield a rich harvest. Jesus died so that we might live, and everyone who dies in union with him participates in the life-giving power of his death… each of our deaths can become a death for others. I think that we need to start seeing the profound meaning of this dying for each other in and through the death of Christ in order to catch a glimpse of what eternal life might mean. Eternity is born in time, and every time someone dies whom we have loved dearly, eternity can break into our mortal existence a little bit more.”

    p 60

    I didn’t intend to fill this post with quotes. But maybe that’s the best way to introduce you all to the book. I’m hoping to write a follow-up post with some more developed engagement with some of his words, but I’ll leave you with a quote that resonates with the purpose of this website:

    “I am writing you this letter in the firm conviction that reality can be faced and entered with an open mind and an open heart, and in the sincere belief that consolation and comfort are to be found where our wounds hurt most.”

    p 17

    I share Nouwen’s hope and conviction. This is why I’m studying and writing. If this is true, if our consolation is be found in our most painful wounds, then bandaging our wounds with greeting card sympathy and resurrection-talk before, or maybe “without” is a better word there, we have examined their depth is a mistake. And to be honest, it’s a mistake I don’t want to make. 

    I think this is why I found A Letter of Consolation helpful. He doesn’t shy away from a deep examination of what happens when someone dies. He digs, looking for the diamonds of hope God intends for us to find as we plunge down into the depths of grief. I’m glad for Nouwen’s introspection, and that he was willing to publish such personal reflections. I think they’re well-worth reading.

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