When waking up every day we may be lucky to wake up, to face the day again. In the day we may perhaps encounter lots of things which surprises us and sometimes we call out ‘good grief’
The young Garrick Sinclair “Ricky” Beckett, a U.S. Army veteran honourably discharged as a professional saxophonist in the Army Bands, currently attending Concordia University-Ann Arbor in the Pre-Seminary programme with a major in Christian Thought and a minor in Theological Languages looks at a popular cartoon figure.
He writes
As he hears some bad news, Charlie Brown exclaims, “Good grief!” We often think of this as an oxymoron. Grief can’t possibly be good! {Good grief}
Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By the word grief we think of sorrow and distress, even of great mourning and affliction. When having bodily pain or when our mind is being hurt we can be grief stricken. Deep sadness caused especially by someone’s death or by trouble or annoyance grief comes over us. Grievance overmans us when there is a cause of such suffering or a deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement. We can come to grief but than it means we fail in something we’re doing, and may be hurt.
Mary Bringle also noticed
Even the cleverest boy could come to grief alone, in the night. {Collins dictionary on Come to grief}
In Dutch ‘grief’ is ‘verdriet’ and is connected to ‘lijden (suffering), ‘bedroefd zijn’ (grow sad, being sad, be sorry, sorrow) maar ook tot ‘afkeer’ (aversion, distaste, disgust, revulsion,repulsion, repugnance, loathing, abhorrence, abomination, scunner). When ‘come to grief‘ we founder, break down, collapse, fall through, flop (informal), be defeated, fall short, fizzle out (informal), come unstuck, run aground, bite the dust, and even feel that we go up in smoke, come to naught, not make the grade (informal), go down like a lead balloon (informal). In any case it looks like it turns out badly, us falling flat on our face, meeting with disaster. Stuck with grief we may be found lacking or wanting, facing a spiritual miscarry or misfire.
Some people say ‘Good grief‘ when they are surprised or shocked. When we face something that’s actually worth grieving over, we’re often overwhelmed.
From a ‘sukkelstraatje’ (being in trouble/in dire stratis) we can become ailing (sickly) with a ‘sukkelpartij’ (sucker party) receiving ‘zielspijn’ (agony, heartache, profound sorrow) or ‘zieleleed’ (sadness). That ‘zielesmart’ or ‘zielsverdriet’ (anguish, heartache,profound sorrow, misery, unhappiness), ‘Weedom’ (woe), ‘hartenpijn’ ‘hartenleed’ (heartache, heartfelt grief, heartfelt sorrow, heartbreak), agony consumes us with grief.
We do know we have to cope with it, we have to conquer it or go over such grief.
It’s rather ironic that our culture views grief as a bad thing while it encourages grief over a lot of things. It is encouraged that we grieve over minimum wage, to grieve over what the White Man did to black people centuries ago during slavery, to grieve over what the government did to the indigenous peoples of America… {Good grief}
The savoury on our daily bread is not always pleasant. we may try to begin every day with gratitude, because all we have, has been given to us. This body, heart and mind, friendships, opportunities, challenges, family,… it is all given to us. But honestly we are not always pleased with the confrontation with it.
We may value family where we practice love and sharing. We may value work where we share our passions and gifts. And most of all we would like to have a good health and value it.
As we align with gratitude, values, dharma, and who we are as limitless conscious existence, every action we take becomes a contribution to the whole. {Why Are We Here?}
Getting up we notice we face the day and can fill it with words and deeds.
this world we touch but in words
words insulated in plated metal
this world we hold but in teeth
teeth estranged from heart’s palate {This World, A Seat}
Sometimes it looks like every day again we do have to start all over again, going back to these “manifold temptations,” which tour around our face. Every day there are so many things we do have to face, so many experiences we have to go through.
It can be anything in this life that tends to trouble us or haunt us that can bring grief over us.
something that hurts you at the most sensitive and delicate core of your soul, heart, and mind — things that tend to make you miserable. How do we get past these things? {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}
Facing each day we have to open our eyes and look at all things, seeing them in perspective, trying to understand what is really going on and what sort of place it deserves.
The danger is to just endure our troubles with groans and whines and complaints and not do anything to discover the remedy to the situation. We come into the danger of thinking, “Why is God doing this to me?” {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}
With “Ricky” Beckett we urge you not to think “why” these things happen to us, but rather to think what.
Instead of thinking, “Why me,” think instead, “What can I learn from this? What does God want to teach me?” And then how: “How will this make me grow closer to God?” In short, other than the sinful condition of the world we live in, that is why we suffer — to learn something from God and to grow closer to Him, and then the “why” may reveal itself to you as God works out His progressive revelation in your life. That’s the short answer, but now let’s discuss the longer answer. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}
Each day again, and again, we should be prepared to learn and to continue our road, up to a better world for us.
We are living in this world and walking on our paths under the eye of our Heavenly Father.
Say to yourself,
“There is a definite plan and purpose for my life. God has examined me and has adopted me into His family.”
Why does He do this for us? So that He may bring us into perfection (which is not acquired during this earthly life). That is His objective — that you may “be conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29), as Jesus Christ will say, “Here I am with the children God gave Me” (Hebrews 2:13). If we do not believe and recognise this fundamental concept of ourselves as Christians, then we are bound to go astray and misunderstand these troubles that happen to us as God’s children. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Introduction}
These days lots of people take some time to think about the death and remember the dead.
When death and disaster occur, we are so grief stricken that we don’t know what to do. While all this is going on, we avoid grieving over our sin, which the thing we should grieve the most. It is good to grieve over this because our sin alienates us from God. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23a). We should grieve greatly over this because the end of our sin is death. But fear not! The Romans verse continues, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Godly grief is good grief, for it leads us to repentance. Godly grief, or good grief, causes us to recognise our need for forgiveness—our need for Christ. By repentance we exercise faith in Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and we are justified by faith (Romans 5:1).
Let us always remember that God may permit all these things we have to face, to happen to us and to the people around us, not for the purpose of making us suffer and watching us squirm, as some would like to believe, but rather in order to chastise us, which He enacts due to our complacency and for our failure.
In 2 Peter 1:5-7, the apostle writes that Christians are to discipline themselves and to supplement attributes to their faith, not merely to be content with minimal faith but for it to be forever increasing. There are Christians who do not take heed of this exhortation and instead are indefatigable with their complacency and indolence. As I understand New Testament doctrine, if we do that we should not be surprised if we start to experience troubles — that God perhaps begins to chastise us by shaking us off our shiftless butts. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – Chastisement}
We ourselves are also not free from bringing grief to others. We must recognise that we too can do things wrongly. We too can bring pain to others and give them heartache or grief. Many Christians are convinced that as re-born people they cannot sin. But they are mistaken.
First John 3:9-10 says,
“Everyone who has been born of God does not sin, because His seed remains in him; he is not able to sin, because he has been born of God. This is how God’s children — and the Devil’s children — are made evident.”
Now, it is easy to misinterpret this passage. It is not saying that God’s children are incapable of sinning. After all, even though we’re God’s children, we still sin.
St. John is saying that the one “born of God” — that is, baptised in the Holy Spirit — does not make it his life’s trade to sin.
The child of God does not make it his life’s priority to live in sin, as the children of the Devil do (e.g. the homosexual lifestyle, a murderous lifestyle such as ISIS or serial killers, etc.).
God’s children are not free from acts of sin, but the child of God does not commit to be a servant of sin, but rather a servant of God and His holiness. Christians are not impeccable; they are simultaneously saint and sinner (simul iustus et peccator). Sin lives within us, but the Christian is justified by faith (Romans 5:1; Galatians 3:24). John is not speaking of sinless perfection but of a life imputed with Christ’s righteousness.
We can and shall have moments of weakness and shall sin. Afterwards we should repent, which is doing a work of faith. Only when we do such works of faith shall we be able to enter the Kingdom of God. When not willing to see what we have done wrong and not wanting to repent over the wrongdoing we shall not be allowed to enter through the small gate. The teshuvah or repentance is a necessary ingredient to come to God.
Knowing that God may have a particularly great task set for us we should wonder what we can do in the world God has prepared for us. Facing that world, where we are so many times tested, we should not mind having ourselves tested, when we are standing straight in our shoes, going for the One True God.
So, one may have to pass through a certain trial because of some great task ahead that God has planned for them. Think of any biblical character that had to endure such a trial. The first person that comes to mind for me is Jonah. He was running from God’s calling to preach to Nineveh, and as we know he was swallowed by a great fish; and upon repentance and accepting his calling, God saved his life by having the great fish spit him out onto the land to fulfill his calling. Maybe a drastic example, but perhaps not as drastic as you might think. Consider any whales of doubt you might have in your life and what God is doing to bring you through those doubts, or what you ought to let Him do. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – God to Prepare Us}
Facing each day lying in front of us we best remember that we are given the opportunity to be here and that God knows what’s best for us and what we need to experience in order to get us where He wants us to be. Therefore let us give ourselves in His Hands and be thankfull that He was willing to accept the ransom offer from His son.
As our Heavenly Father, God may see the need for trials and prescribe the necessary tools that are destined to make us grow in Him for our own good. {Facing Trials: Why Do We Suffer? – God to Prepare Us}
With the knowledge that worldly grief produces only death because the world has no hope for a relief from their grief, we do have a better prospect in the hope given to mankind.
Worldly grief abandons the person who grieves. Godly grief is guilt over sin, which this guilt leads to repentance as the sinner recognises the necessity for forgiveness in Christ, which leads to salvation because the repentance we perform is exercised by this faith gifted to us, and it is through this gift of faith that we are saved (Ephesians 2:8-9). {Good grief}
Perhaps we leave it to others to say ‘good grief’ when they see our endurance and come to see we want to present to the world a good example of a loving person, whatever happens to him.
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Preceding
Our existence..
Facing our existence every day
Are you right down in the dumps? Stop digging!
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Additional reading
- A world in denial
- Materialism, would be life, and aspirations
- Dealing with worries in our lives
- Emotional pain and emotional deadness
- Fragments from the Book of Job #1: chapters 1-12
- Fragments from the Book of Job #4: chapters 27-31
- Isaiah prophet and messenger of God
- Suffering
- Offer in our suffering
- Suffering – through the apparent silence of God
- Suffering continues
- Suffering leading to joy
- Self inflicted misery #8 Pruning to strengthen us
- Surprised by time in joys & sufferings
- Profitable disasters
- Prayer has comforted us in sorrow
- The soul has no rainbow if the eyes have no tears
- Every athlete exercises self control
- Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #4 Transitoriness #3 Rejoicing in the insistence
- Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #8 Prayer #6 Communication and manifestation
- Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #9 Prayer #7 Reason to pray
- Trusting, Faith, Calling and Ascribing to Jehovah #10 Prayer #8 Condition
- Continuing Paul’s Prayer Requests
- Written to recognise the Promissed One
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Further reading
- Day By Day
- Grief
- Throw-back Thursday: Grief is a fickle foe
- Book Mark: Notes on Friends’ Grief
- Grief From Across The World
- The Well of Grief
- The unspoken grievance
- The Five Stages of Grief
- Sad
- Memories…and Grief
- Deviant Deflections – Unrequited Love
- When part of you is missing
- No one tells you about the guilt..
- Monday Morning Grievance: The New Copier
- After Suicide
- How To Go On
- God I miss you.
- Letter to you, my little one…
- That feeling
- Heart Holes
- Waiting For The Dutchman
- Old Unfinished Post: The 5 Stages of Relationship Grief
- Grief embraces love
- 1 a.m. on the Borderline
- Inside the glacier of my mind
- Beautiful Reminders
- Beyond the grey clouds
- The Mercy of the Morning
- Here’s to better naked tomorrows
- It Is God’s Gospel
- (11/04/2016) Works of the Spirit?
- Forgiveness and Eternal Life Through Jesus Christ
- Does Working with Others Lead to Better Results than Acting as an Individual? L 41
- Leading by example
- Jesus Models Friendship
- Saints
- Mercy in giving
- 1 Timothy 4:12 (31.10.16)
- The stories we tell
- Eulogia
- “Conformity To The Will Of God”
- Advice… L38
- If You Really Love Me
- Life Changing Moments While Young
- Good Advice for Us in Today’s World
- Love as a god
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Heavenly Father and Precious Lord, we seek you and your healing mercy.
Mel Lawrenz trains an international network of Christian leaders, ministry pioneers, and thought-leaders. He served as senior pastor of Elmbrook Church in Brookfield, Wisconsin, for ten years and now serves as Elmbrook’s minister at large. He has a Ph.D. in the history of Christian thought and is on the adjunct faculty of Trinity International University. Mel is the author of 18 books, the latest, 
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