Across thirty centuries, comes this cry of grief from David, whom God called from being a shepherd of herds to be the shepherd of His people, Israel. David had a son named Absalom. Absalom had murdered his brother because that brother had raped his sister, Tamar. After being accepted back into the family, Absalom had led a rebellion against his father, the king. That rebel son had won the Israeli army to his side. In a dramatic showdown in the woods of Ephraim, Absalom rode through the forest away from his father’s men, when suddenly his mule went beneath the thick boughs of a great oak tree, and his hair was caught in the branches. His mule went on, leaving Absalom dangling in the air. David’s men told General Joab what had happened to Absalom. They were reluctant to kill the young man because David had instructed them to deal gently with him. " ‘Enough of this nonsense,’ Joab said. Then he took three daggers and plunged them into the heart of Absalom as he dangled alive from the oak. Ten of Joab’s young armor bearers then surrounded Absalom and finished him off" (2 Samuel 18:14-15, The Living Bible). A messenger brought the news of Absalom’s death to King David. "The king was overcome with grief. He went up to his room over the gateway and wept. As he went he cried, ‘O my son, my son, Absalom, Absalom, my son, if only I had died in your place, my son’ " (2 Samuel 18:33, TEV). When a child buries his parent, he is burying the past. But, when a parent buries his child, he is burying the future. As we look at David sobbing out his grief, consider two questions: What is grief? How can we meet grief?

"I am worn out with grief," wrote the Psalmist. "Every night my bed is damp from my weeping; my pillow is soaked with tears. I can hardly see; my eyes are swollen from my weeping" (Psalm 6:6, TEV). What is grief? The word grief comes from the Latin word "gravis," meaning "heavy." When you grieve, you have a heavy heart. The heaviness comes from four feelings. First, you feel deprived because you have lost someone dear to you. Secondly, you feel disbelieving. Under the shock of the loss, you feel numb and you deny the reality of what has happened. "It can’t be," you’re apt to say. Thirdly, you feel depressed. The depression appears as an attitude of hopelessness, emptiness, and a lack of interest in what’s going on around you. Fourthly, you feel devitalized by negative emotions. About the past, you may feel guilt about things done or left undone. About the present, you may feel anger at the attending doctors, the hospital, other family members, or even God. About the future, you may feel worry about how you will be able to carry on without the person who has died.

I

How can we meet grief? There are four things that we can do as we confront the emotion of grief. Each of these four actions begins with the letter "D." First, consider the word "Declare." You can meet grief by declaring it. Why do peopie try to hide their grief? Sometimes, no doubt, it is because they are unwilling to add the weight of their grief to the woes already being carried by other people. Furthermore, people who do not declare their grief may fear that the sympathy they will receive from others who see them vent their grief will dissolve their own self-control. Still another reason people do not declare their grief is because of pride. They enjoy the reputation of strength which unexpressed grief earns them. As an unknown poet has written:

They call me strong because my tears I shed where none can see,

Because I smile, tell merry tales, and win the crowds to me.

They call me strong because I laugh to ease an aching heart,

Because I keep the sweet side out, and hide the bitter part.

In William Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth, a character named MacDuff had just learned that his wife and children have been murdered. His friend Malcolm advises MacDuff to declare his grief: "Give sorrow words. The grief that does not speak whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break" (IV, 3, 209). Remember that memorable scene in John’s account of the Gospel. As Christ stood at the tomb of Lazarus, his friend, he declared his grief by crying. Such an outward expression of grief by Christ contradicts the advice of some misguided parents who tell their sons, "Big boys don’t cry." A psychologist has stated that some boys at age ten have been so conditioned by their parents that they do not dare to cry. When one of those boys reaches the age of twenty, he doesn’t even think of crying when he has experienced disappointment because his girlfriend has jilted him or he has been dropped from college. When this young man has reached the age of forty, says the psychologist, he doesn’t even know how to cry. However, though unexpressed by words, that grief may leak out as physical illness.

II

Secondly, consider the word "Delight." You can meet grief by delighting in the memory of those good experiences you shared with the departed person. In the Middle Ages, many persons sought a magical chemical which would have the power to transform some base metal, such as lead, into gold. This combination of chemistry, magic, and philosophy was called alchemy. In a figurative sense, there is a magic-like element that can transform ordinary grief into "good grief." That element is gratitude. Go back over your life in memory and think of what you shared with that person whom you loved and have lost awhile. Then, give thanks to God for all the good experiences which flowed into your life because of that departed person. You will find that such gratitude can put a healing balm on your grieving soul.

In a certain town, there was a woman who was a busybody. One day she met the town lawyer on Main Street. She tried to get information out of him about the death of the town’s richest man. "You knew him well," she cooed. "How much wealth did he leave?" The old lawyer tipped his hat and replied, "All of it, madam, all of it!" Not only do our loved ones leave their wealth behind; they leave behind them, too, the memory of their words and their example. In quiet moments, we reflect with gratitude on what their lives have meant on us to our own journey.

During the Civil War, there was a stockade at Andersonyule, in southwestern Georgia. The log stockade enclosed only sixteen acres, but as many as 30,000 Northern prisoners at a time were crowded into that small space! More than 12,000 graves witness to the dreadful conditions there. In Wisconsin, there is a monument in memory of the 378 young men from that state who died in the Andersonville stockade. On the monument are lines written by Thomas Campbell. As we delight in the happy memory of our loved ones, we can make those words our own:

And is he dead, whose glorious mind
Lifts thine on high?
To live in hearts we leave behind
Is not to die.

III

Thirdly, consider the word "Dedicate." You can meet grief by dedicating yourself to doing something for other persons who are hurting. "When I dig another person out of trouble," says an old Chinese proverb, "the hole from which I lift him is the place where I bury my own trouble." Leslie Weatherhead, the late English preacher, grieved for his mother after she died. One day he picked up her Bible and found strengthening words written on the flyleaf of that Bible. Here are those words:

If I should die, and leave you here awhile,
Be not like others sore undone, who keep
Long vigils by the silent dust and weep.
For my sake, turn again to life, and smile,

Nerving thy heart and trembling hand to do
Something to comfort weaker hearts than thine.
Complete these dear unfinished tasks of mine,
And I, perchance, may therein comfort you!

In his book How To Be A Transformed Person, E. Stanley Jones wrote: "Meister Eckhart said, ‘God’s every affliction is a lure’ - a lure to help you to help others. You are made tender by your sorrow, and that tenderness can make your service tenderly effective." Dr. Jones illustrated that quotation by telling the story of Josephine Butler. This woman had only one child whom she loved very much. One day, as Josephine Butler arrived home in her carriage, this little girl ran to the railing and fell, dying at her mother’s feet. In her grief, she went to an old Quaker man who taught her to transform her dejection into dedication. The Quaker said: "God has taken to himself her whom thou didst love: but there are many forlorn young hearts who need that mother love of thine." At the instruction of the Quaker gentleman, she went to a house which had been turned into a refuge. Forty young people were being cared for in that place. Dr. Jones

commented: "Josephine Butler threw herself into that service and became one of the greatest social reformers of the century. She didn’t bear her grief; she set it to music."

IV

Fourthly, consider the word "Decide." You can meet grief by deciding to look at life and death from the perspective of Jesus Christ. The late German theologian Helmut Thielicke wrote these words in his book How To Believe: "For basically faith is nothing else than a certain way of looking at things." Just as the negative faith of atheism is essentially a certain way of looking at life, so the faith of the Christian is looking at life through the eyes of Christ who said, "Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you" (John 14:1-2, NKJV). The imagery which Christ used in these words comes from the travel arrangements in the first century. Along the roads, there were "mansions" at regular stages of a traveler’s journey. These places were not "mansions" in our sense of the word, but simply accommodations for travelers. A traveler would make his way along that road until the shadows lengthened and the evening came. Then, he would stop at one of those mansions to rest for the night. The next morning he would resume his journey and travel another stage of his journey. In effect, Christ was saying to us, "Within my Father’s world, there are many ‘stations’ marking the stages of growth in the journey of a soul. If it were not so, I surely would have told you." Because of Christ, God’s children never see one another for the last time!

This way of looking at life accounts for the note of joy and triumph among the early Christians whom St. Augustine called "the Easter People." In A.D. 125, a Greek named Aristides wrote to a friend about the new religion of those who had decided to look at life and death through the eyes of Christ: "If any righteous man among the Christians passes from this world, they rejoice and offer thanks to God, and they escort his body with songs and thanksgivings as if he were setting out from one place to another nearby." Five hundred years later, in A.D. 627, the court of King Edwin of Northumbria awaited the first Christian missionary to arrive in that area. His name was Paulinus. The old hall was blazing with torches. A crowd of eager listeners waited to hear what the visitor would say. A bearded old earl stood up in his place and asked, "Can this new religion tell us what happens after death? The life of man is like a swallow flying through this lighted hall. It enters in at one door from the darkness outside, and flitting through the light and warmth passes through the farther door into the dark unknown beyond. Can this new religion solve for us the mystery? What comes to men in the dark, dim unknown?" Maybe that old earl, like King David centuries before, was thinking of his boy killed in battle. King Edwin decided to look at death - and life - from the perspective of Jesus Christ. Edwin was baptized on Easter Eve, 627, at York in a wooden church which had been erected for the occasion.

The stages of grief are our "stations of the cross." Those stages have been mapped out by Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and others. Clearly, not only the dying, but those who are left here must go through the disbelief and denial, the anger and depression, and, we hope, the acceptance. Though we can meet grief by declaring it, by delighting with gratitude in happy memories, by dedicating ourselves to others who are hurting, and by deciding to look at death through the eyes of Christ, we cannot evade traveling through the dark valley of the shadow of death as those who grieve for souls whom we have loved and see no longer. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Donald Coggan, has written about "the hard lesson of Christian prepositions - that the predominant preposition is not ‘out of’ but ‘through’ and ‘in.’ ‘My strength is made perfect in weakness.’ ‘When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee’ " (Isaiah 43:2). The darkness of the valley of grief through which we must pass reminds us of the darkness on the hill of Golgotha. All griefs lead to the Cross. There, we find ourselves part of the company of those who mourn. We can entrust our departed to Christ.

Through all depths of pain and loss
Sinks the plummet of His Cross;
Never yet abyss was found
Deeper than that Cross could sound.

So, we leave them in His hands. Where better could we leave them?