Sunday message- grief

This Sunday, we take a week off from the Lord's prayer to look at grieving, and the two aspects thereof.  As you know, I have been going through that process, and thankfully far from alone, between the grace of God and those who knew and loved my Boofus with me.  But it has been an ordeal- some self-inflicted, some not.  And there are two sections in the Bible that have come to my awareness as a result.


The first came in a reading of Exodus 12- the instructions for the Passover:


Exo 12:3  Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers' houses, a lamb for a household. 
Exo 12:4  And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 
Exo 12:5  Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 
Exo 12:6  and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. 
Exo 12:7  "Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 
Exo 12:8  They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 
Exo 12:9  Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 
Exo 12:10  And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 
Exo 12:11  In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD's Passover. 

I boldened the pertinent parts to this story- let me point them out.

The Lamb without blemish is symbolic of Jesus.  In the Brenton translation, verse 10 is expanded to read, " and a bone of it ye shall not break;" further testimony to this.

The Blood on the doorposts and lintel is His blood, making the wrath of God pass over us.

Skip ahead to verse 11.  This is our life on earth- ready to travel at a moment's notice for the Promised Land.  Our life here was never meant to be a comfortable one.

Verse 8- here's what life on earth is supposed to be- EATING BITTER HERBS.  Pain is part of the package, bitter loss the meal- but not the GOAL.

Okay, so that's one side of the loss.  Here's the other.  For those of you that know nothing of Jonah's story other than his ride in the whale, Jonah saved the day through God- but wasn't happy about it.  But God saw him moping, and taught an object lesson:

Jon 4:1  But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. 

Jon 4:2  And he prayed to the LORD and said, "O LORD, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. 

Jon 4:3  Therefore now, O LORD, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live." 

Jon 4:4  And the LORD said, "Do you do well to be angry?" 

Jon 4:5  Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, till he should see what would become of the city. 

Jon 4:6  Now the LORD God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah, that it might be a shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort. So Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. 

Jon 4:7  But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, so that it withered. 

Jon 4:8  When the sun rose, God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint. And he asked that he might die and said, "It is better for me to die than to live." 

Jon 4:9  But God said to Jonah, "Do you do well to be angry for the plant?" And he said, "Yes, I do well to be angry, angry enough to die." 

Jon 4:10  And the LORD said, "You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. 

Jon 4:11  And should not I pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?" 

Okay, let me take this apart for you, and put me in it.  I'm playing the part of Jonah- Scrappy plays the part of the plant.

God Understands our grief.

God gives us these non-permanent gifts, like pets, "to save us from our discomfort".

God gives us a bit of time to be angry with the loss, but doesn't want us sitting there bitter about it either.

God has a big picture He's looking at (played today by Nineveh), and we should be more concerned with it than our small chunk of it.

Oh, and one more thing- note His concern with the ANIMALS therein?

The Book of Jonah ends there, leaving us to make our own choices.  For me, I'm trying not to sit there until the 'scorching east wind' starts.  But I've got a withered plant in my heart, and a worm I step on day after day.  And like everyone else, the taste of bitter herbs in my mouth.