Pause VIII, Day 3 A Collect In Loss
Pause VIII ~ Day Three
His Words Before Ours
Matthew 27:45-53
Matthew 28:19-20
Psalm 139:7-12
Deuteronomy 31:8
Loss is inescapable.
When it inevitably finds us, whether having long announced its impending arrival or stunning us in a tactical strike of grief, we often find ourselves plunged, suddenly, into the space between realities.
The reality we once knew until loss’s arrival vanishes. Much as we might long to go back, to spend a few precious moments savoring before, we feel the thick vault door clang shut on that time with a thud resounding in our souls. The only way is forward.
For everyone outside the bubble of this particular loss, reality flows on, undisturbed. How, we wonder, breathless and numb, can life just keep going like nothing happened?
And of course, there’s our new reality, stretching before us vast and inconceivable.
A reality into which we’ve been thrust against our will and forced to navigate, one stumbling and heartbroken step at a time.
Words can’t really help, when we’re suspended in this void.
Thoughtless ones can, and often do, hurt.
When we’re lost in that space, we desperately need Someone to wrap His hand around our icy fingers. To let us know He’s in the void with us. And then to lead us, with quiet confidence, out of the void and into tomorrow.
A Collect in Loss
Eternal Father,
whose grief at His Son’s death tore apart the veil of reality, shrouded the sun, and shook the very foundations of the earth:
sustain and comfort us when our world seems to end
sinking, silent and cold, in the airless black deep of loss,
that when our souls come to rest on the craggy bottom, amidst the terrors and monsters of an unknown and unwanted future,
we find we are not alone, but held firmly by the One Whose heart is the first to break,
through Jesus Christ, Your resurrected Son, amen.
Today’s Collect Components
Address: Eternal Father,
Doctrine: whose grief at His Son’s death tore apart the veil of reality, shrouded the sun, and shook the very foundations of the earth:
Petition: sustain and comfort us when our world seems to end
sinking, silent and cold, in the airless black deep of loss,
Aspiration: that when our souls come to rest on the craggy bottom, amidst the terrors and monsters of an unknown and unwanted future,
we find we are not alone, but held firmly by the One Whose heart is the first to break,
Mediation: through Jesus Christ, Your resurrected Son, amen.
Meditate & Reflect
1) As you read and prayerfully meditate on the passages from Matthew (listed above), consider the Father’s loss as He watched His only Son in these final hours. The heartbreak He was willing to walk through that we might be offered salvation is unfathomable.
2) Consider the words of Pastor Paul. Read them slowly several times, letting them fall fresh on your heart with wonder amidst seemingly drowning sorrows,
“He did not even spare His own Son
but gave him up for us all.
How will He not also with Him
grant us everything?”
(Romans 8:32)
3) Consider ways you have witnessed the love of the Father shining through as mercies, even in dark grief. If you can’t find any, ask Him to show you!
Worship
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