tanzania

The Purpose of Grief

The world looks different these days. It has changed how we handle, process, and grieve so many life events. For me, the new slowness of life around me has brought more attention and space for me to process grief. I am not a feeler. I tend to run towards anything that is happy and avoid the sad. But the stillness around me has left me with not much to do outside of process. 

Yesterday, 2 dear humans that were a part of my life left this world. One a family member and the other a woman who played a large part in my first 10 years in South Carolina. I felt the sad, and instinctively thought of how to get out of it. But, due to the current circumstances, there isn't much to run to.

So I sat in it and I wept. and I asked the Lord why death has to hurt so deeply. Why a season already causing confusion and a loss of control now had a grief and heaviness as well.

And in the sitting and the weeping and the hurting, I felt the sweetness of a Savior. The assurance of a Jesus who sits in the nights weeping and rejoices in the glory of the morning with us.

And I realized, maybe, just maybe, this is what grief is for. To remind us it is okay to be a human. To cry. To feel deeply. And to bring us back to the Savior, who is always near, even in seasons of confusion and heartache.

Guest Post by: Kam Kelley

That They Would Seek God

Dash.jpg

“Having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their self habitation, that they would seek God.” ~ Acts 17:26-27

As I read this scripture this past week, I was reminded about the poem of the dash on a person’s tombstone. In it, the author writes “for it matters not how much we own, the cars, the house, the cash. What matters is how we live and love and how we spend our dash.”

Listen to what Paul says in Acts 17 when proclaiming Christ to those in Athens. The Lord has already appointed our time here on earth and it’s just a small blip in the history of mankind. He’s even determined the boundaries of our existence. He knew before the foundation of the world when we would physically exist. He knew where we would grow up. He knew that you would be born in America, or Africa or Asia, etc.

This has huge implications, because it speaks of purpose. He could have chosen not to create me. He could have had me grow up in Europe in 400 A.D. or in the middle of the bush in Africa in the 1500s. But he didn’t, because he had purpose for me here and now. And his purpose wasn’t that I would be great or that I would make a name for myself. It wasn’t so that I would make significant contributions to this world, though I may. It was much simpler than that. His sole purpose was that I would seek Him, that I would know him and encourage others to do the same.

I think we get caught up in pursuing our own little dash, that we miss out on the fact that it’s not our dash in the first place. It’s His. It’s all about Him. Would that perspective forever define my dash? Would my dash be sold out to completely seeking Him?

~ Brent Roberts
Africa Freedom Mission