It’s now the day after. The One you had all your hopes and dreams pinned on is dead, really, really dead. Your hopes, your dreams for something new, whether it was ridding your land of the hated oppressors or some vague dream of a better world – it’s gone, all gone. And, on top of all that, you feel that you’re being hunted, like an animal, like prey.
How often we feel more than alone when we’ve lost someone we loved; we also feel deserted. We try to go about our daily routine but inside, there’s a deep gnawing feeling. The women were there, of course, preparing the body for burial. We see the same scenes after terrible deaths in war; the women are always there, doing what has to be done while mourning the ones they loved.
Often when leaders of a movement are struck down, whether by an assassin’s bullet like Gandhi, King, Berta Caceres, or poisoned slowly like Navalny, the hope for change seems crushed. Despondent, we flounder. We ask ourselves how we will now continue. How do we go on without the one who inspired us? How do we still bring hope to others?
Prayer for the Day
Between our fear of death and the promise of new life, O God,
We come to you for we truly fear the loss our lives;
The Fridays of our lives so often are painful, O Lord,
And we struggle to get past them to embrace hopr..
Grant, O Lord, that we are able to live as if Friday is not the end,
But a transformation brought about by your grace.
In the name of the One who transforms us,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
No one ever told me that grief felt so much like fear
C.S. Lewis, from A Grief Observed (1898-1963)
grief is a house
where the chairs
have forgotten how to hold us
the mirrors how to reflect us
the walls how to contain us
Judy Nelson, from The Sky s Everywhere
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord rescues them from them all.
Psalm 34: 18-19