MARISSA BONDURANT | CONTRIBUTOR
A cloud of collective grief hovers over Texas. For days after the flood, there was an actual dark cloud over all central Texas as the whole of creation groaned together in the pains of grief and longing (Rom. 8:22). A suppressive force of humidity mixed with shock and stirred with sorrow made it hard to breathe, sleep, or even make basic decisions.
Although the headlines focus on the heartache in Texas, I know that this grief is seeping much farther from here. So many of the people who died were visiting from all over the country. Little girls at summer camp. Families camping under majestic cypress trees. Grandparents bunked up with grandchildren to make precious memories over the holiday.
And now, thousands of people across the country grieve the loss of loved ones, co-workers, classmates, teammates, neighbors, and friends.
Living in San Antonio, the Guadalupe River is considered our backyard play place. Everyone I know is only 1 or 2 degrees away from the devastation. My church alone had three girls at Camp Mystic the day the water rose. A dear friend of ours is on the ground doing recovery work. He’s got a military, warzone, ER doctor background, and he said he’s never seen anything like this.
As of the writing this, they expect close to 300 image bearers to eventually be found in the debris.
And in this deep, collective grief, we need the Church. We need you.
Questions Asked in Tragedy
Our eleven- year- old was at camp near the river just a couple weeks before the flood. In the car yesterday she asked me, “Isn’t God good? Why didn’t he stop this?”
That’s a question we always ask when tragedy strikes. When the unimaginable occurs—our brains struggle to hold together two seemingly conflicting thoughts: that God is good, and that God is sovereign.
We cannot know the mind of God, yet we jump right into questions that we’ll never have the answers to this side of heaven. But there are things we can know.
One of those is that sometimes God chooses restraint.
We talked about the cross, and how God chose restraint. He could have stopped Jesus’ suffering and death in any number of ways, yet He didn’t. No one understood it then, but now we can see the unbelievable reason why. God knew what He was doing then. God knows what He is doing now.
Right now, all we can see is sorrow and loss. All we can feel is grief and pain. But one day, just as His friends came face to face with Jesus after the resurrection, we too will be face to face with Christ and all will be well.
Grievers Need Believers
But we are still in the waiting time. The earth is still groaning for Jesus to come back and for all to be redeemed. And there are thousands of people who have found themselves tumbling headfirst into a pit of darkness that feels impossible to escape. Grief is lonely, isolating, and oppressive. The pit of grief is full of lies that seek to pull even the strongest of believers away from faith. Lies about God’s character and His love.
In this pit, we need the Church. We need you.
We understand that there is a difference between living the horror and reading about it in the news. We don’t expect anyone outside this experience to understand or to jump into the pit with us. But we do need you to stand guard around the rim.
We need believers to create a protective wall around us. We need you to fasten on the armor of God, holding up your shields of faith to protect us from the flaming arrows of the evil one. Arrows that seek to strip believers of hope. To harden hearts and let doubts win. Don’t let the enemy near us. Pray for us; sing songs of hope when our lips can’t; praise God when all we can do is cry.
We need you to wield the sword of the Spirit (which is the Word of God) with grace and compassion. We need you to pray at all times, in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. We need you to fasten your feet with the readiness of the gospel of peace and stand firm around the hurting (Eph. 6:10-18).
Trusting While Grieving
After I talked to my girls about the cross, we acknowledged that while there is much we won’t understand, we can still trust God.
We can trust the God that tells the waves how far they are allowed to come and no farther – knowing that the wall of water was never outside of God’s sovereign oversight (Job 38:11).
We can trust the God whose voice even the wind and waves obey—knowing that if it was best, God’s whisper would have stopped it all (Mark 4:41).
We can trust the God who formed each and every one of these image-bearers in their mother’s wombs, numbered their days, and counted the hairs on their head (Psalm 139; Matthew 10:30). There was not a single moment of their lives that God didn’t see them rising, sitting, sleeping, or crying.
We can trust that the God who said, “let the little children come to me” (Matt. 19:14) was near to each of those children in their final breathes, and as they cried out to their loved ones for help.
We can trust that the God of Revelation, will one day make all this right. He will wipe away our tears. He will bring healing, comfort, and restoration to hearts and lives that have been ravaged by grief (Rev. 21:4).
There are things we don’t know, and the pit of grief may feel very dark indeed. But the Church can be a barricade of hope. We need Christ to return. And we need you, Church, to help carry us until then.
Photo by Ch Photography on Unsplash
