redemption

Oh there are some heavy things in the world. If it lasted much more than a drop in the bucket, I'm not sure I could bear it. If the purposes of the Lord did not still stand...if He were not on the throne above and before and beyond, if He were not just ahead and just behind and if we could not come boldly to His throne of grace, and if we did not receive there mercy and grace to help us in our time of need...I'd be giving up, wouldn't you.

The pains of all the world aside--as if they ever could be--my own world groans.

A dear friend waits on for her miracle, and I wait, with eager expectancy and hope and often holding my breath, with her. I have lost both an aunt and an uncle in the past two months following their many months of suffering. Some friends suddenly lost their son this week in a troubled time in a troubled way. And tonight instead of cooking I sat down for the fourth time to prayerfully and painstakingly copy out DK McKelvey's Liturgy for those who have suffered a miscarriage or stillbirth for our dear friends a month after the loss of their perfect and complete son. 

That liturgy ends like this, and I needed to pen it tonight.

The future hope, however radiant, will not end the pain we feel today.

It does not negate empty hands. It does not fill empty cradles. It does not mend cratering heartache.

But.

It does declare the empty cradle and the empty arms and the empty spaces will NOT have power to grieve us forever. 

For one day, one day our eternal joys will flow backward in time,

even to these very broken places.

And then those joys will fill every emptiness and every heartbreak 

the children of God have EVER endured.

For Yours, O Father,

is the kingdom

and the power

and the glorious redemption

of all our losses.

even this one.