Lot’s of wonderful people have been asking how I’m doing, and, I haven’t known excatly how to answer. If you have experienced grief, you know the process. You might be fine at this moment, and then tweny years after the funeral, the sight of a yellow pick-up on the road will send you sobbing into the kitchen. This appears to be a fairly univeral phenomenon. Yesterday, this phrase from one of my late grandfather’s prayers came to my mind:
“Please reconcile us to the changing scenes of this life.”
But, this time, I was surprised that it made me think of reconciling my bank statement. I wondered what that had to do with the deep grief of losing my father or the universal angst of watching my grandchildren grow up so fast. So, I researched the word. Reconcile has several meanings
1. to restore friendly relations between.- As in the beautiful gospel message of Jesus coming to make the only way back to a perfect God for His completely imperfect children.
2. to cause to co-exist in harmony.
I’ve always thought my grandfather’s prayer sort of encompassed this second one. I will be forever sad that my father has died. I will miss him deeply until I see him again in Heaven or on the new earth someday. But my grief can co-exist with the joy of watching my grandson throw a perfect pass down the football field without getting sacked. I can hold my father’s memory in a sacred place while I scream and shout and dance in the stands as the receiver eats up ground to score a touch down. And when I feel tears pouring down my cheeks, they will be a mixture of the still-fresh sorrow and the oh-so-proud love that co-exist in harmony. Sometimes, I won’t be able to tell them apart.
But then, I saw the third meaning:
3. to make one account consistent with another, especially allowing for transactions begun but not yet completed.
Transactions begun but not yet completed. This takes us beyond harmony. I’m not asking God to just make me able to stand the pain. I’m not asking him to lay grief and joy on a scale and balance them out so I have some kind of bearable emotion in life. I am asking Him to teach me how to handle the grief, the pain, and the trouble by knowing this: Some transactions have begun that are not completed yet.
Jesus knew this when He went to the cross. The Bible says, “for the joy set before Him” he endured the pain.
When everyone around Him thought the world was ending, Jesus knew the transaction had only begun.
I am going to hold onto that truth while the scenes of life keep changing around me. And, I’ll probably still cry now and then.
So, how are you doing?