Good Grief?!

 

Life is full of grief. Major illness. Natural disasters. Fire. Crime. War. Death. Each of these is a source of grief. So much more in life too causes grief like arguments, bad report cards, unexpected car repairs. So what do I mean by good grief? Does good grief exist is the question! By good grief I mean grief that you know is but for a moment to end in joy when the fullness of time has expired. Good grief is a temporary suffering on route to happily ever after. Good grief is what any grief becomes when you factor in a Holy God into the scene.

There is plenty that causes grief in our daily human lives. Covid 19, the flu, and even the common cold can all bring on a sense of grief. No one on Earth is immune to such daily ravages as sudden illness. Then there are the everyday natural disasters such as hurricanes, tornados, earthquakes, and eruptions - you get the picture. There is no shortage of things to grieve over. Wildfires, building fires, crime, war and death. Not to mention that assignment you let go till the last minute and the overdue bills. Life can plague a person with grief.

Is there good grief? Besides letting go and having a good cry is there good grief? Is the full range of human suffering and all the grief in the world serving a higher purpose. A cathartic purpose. A divine revelatory purpose of showing utopias dwelling people that there is more to life possible. Things could have turned out so very differently to they all lived happily ever after. Instead of being endowed by the natural godhead to be prepared for any situation, we could easily have fallen short of the mark of intelligent life. We could easily have been eyewitnesses to doom rather than utopian potentials getting realized. 

With a Holy God on the scene, we are in a greatly improved condition even when we have reason to grieve. We possess the great hope God will turn our tears into joy and our sobbing into gladness. With a Holy God, we inherit a life graced with justice, forgiveness with purging for our wrongs to our fellow beings, and gifts awaiting our willingness to receive them. Prophecy and miracles wait to become a part of our lives taking us to a faithful knowledge all is well. If we are prone to the ravages of illness and time, with a Holy God we can look forward to the life to come when we will no longer be so subject. If we are mortal we can look forward to eternal life after death as every avatar into a mortal creation does. If we are unbelievers we can look forward to overt God signs convincing us to join in belief in good grief and happily ever after!