Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy

In this past year, I have walked alongside people in our church who have lost a child, lost both parents on the same day, and endured through an unwanted divorce. In the past two weeks, I suffered through three terrible days of being sick after testing positive for COVID. Then, after recovering, I had to cancel a trip to Arizona with my wife. In the same week, I walked alongside my mother as my stepdad died from a battle with liver cancer.

Here is what I know: you don’t get to schedule trials. You don’t get to look at your calendar and plan the most convenient time for someone to die or a pandemic to drastically change your life. When you go through trials, there is an overwhelming sense of pain. Physical or emotional, it does not really matter. It just hurts. You want it to end. The expression of pain in trials is called grief.

There are many ways to express grief. For the follower of Christ, we do not grieve without hope because we have a hope rooted in the guarantee of eternal life through a relationship with Jesus (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14). We live aware of the victory God has given us through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 15:57). Every aspect of processing through pain and sorrow should be different for the disciple of Christ. 

As a pastor, I walk alongside people working through grief and sorrow all the time. In addition, as a fellow human, I face grief and sorrow all the time. One of the books that has become a consistent recommendation for anyone going through a season of grief or sorrow or loss is Mark Vroegop’s Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy: Discovering the Grace of Lament. This book is a primer on walking through pain and sorrow.

He gives a beautiful vision for lament. He writes:  

“Lament is the song we sing in the space between pain and promise. It becomes the path between the poles of a hard life and trusting God’s goodness. Lament helps us embrace two truths at the same time: hard is hard; hard is not bad. The historic minor key of lament gives us permission to vocalize our pain while moving us toward God-centered worship. It is an act of faith as we turn to God, lay out our complaints, ask God to keep his promises, and reaffirm your trust in him. Lament is more than tears and crying. To cry is human. But to lament is Christian. It is how we tunnel our way to hope.” 

Over the last 26 years of walking through life with Jesus, I have experienced varying degrees of pain and sorrow, but I have never lost hope. If you look under the surface of my heart, you will find a network of tunnels that have been built. Each tunnel was established during a season when I tunneled my way from pain to promise. In those tunnels, my tears still mark the ground and my songs of lament are still echoing off the walls. Each of those tunnels are trophies of God’s faithfulness. He carried me through every one of them. I learned hope in those tunnels. 

Children of God, brother or sister in Christ, if you are facing a deep season of pain and sorrow, pick up a copy of Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy. Don’t grieve like the world that is without hope. Learn to give words to your pain. Turn to God in confident faith and start to work through your sorrow and grief with Jesus at your side. Start digging a tunnel to hope and over time it will become a trophy of God’s faithfulness. 

This is how the Gospel redeems our sorrow and pain.