Peter Witkowski Memos

Jesus Wept and We Should Too: The Resurrection, Sovereignty and Grief

Jesus wept. This short verse mercifully demonstrates that Jesus can and does as the Bible says elsewhere, “sympathize with our weakness (Heb 4:15).” In that weeping over the death of his friend Lazarus, Jesus legitimized the tears of every grieving husband, wife, child, mother, father, and friend. Jesus knew the soul penetrating pain of our grief.

Should We Grieve?

Though this moment in the biblical timeline grants us the permission to grieve and to grieve deeply, some within the church still find the topic of grief distasteful if not at points unspiritual. They fear that grief could be a denial of the resurrection or of God’s sovereign goodness. Since they know that their loved one is alive with Jesus and that no death is an accident, they view death to be little more than a brief interruption in their daily rhythm. They do not mourn when their husband takes his Sunday nap, why should they now mourn his death?

Such a perspective can be a good and helpful remedy against “excessive grief” or depression. But it cannot banish grief all together, for it was never meant to do so.

Does the Resurrection Banish Grief?

As Martha mourned the death of her brother Lazarus, she tells Jesus, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day (Jn 11:24).” And not only did she have faith in the resurrection, but she also knew the resurrection. Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.” Because Jesus was Immanuel, God with us – the sacrificial lamb who saves us from our sins through his death and resurrection, he can in good faith command: “Lazarus, come out.” John concludes the story with these words: “The man who had died came out, his hands and feed bound with the linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go (11:44).” Jesus did not simply believe in the resurrection. He was the resurrection, the very guarantee and cause of eternal life. In other words, he was the the solution to or the very antidote for death. And still, he wept.

Does Sovereignty Banish Grief?

Moreover, Jesus knew that Lazarus’s death was not an accident brought about by the winds of chance while the heavenly Father was preoccupied with some disaster. The Son in accordance with the Father had ordained the death of Lazarus. Describing the Son’s relationship to the Father, the British pastor Charles Spurgeon noted, “Jesus is to the Father what speech is to us; he is the unfolding of the Father’s thoughts, the revelation of the Father’s heart.” When messengers came from Mary and Martha seeking Jesus’s help – a help that could have resulted in Lazarus’ full recovery, Jesus acting with the Father by the Holy Spirit chose not to come. John’s gospel reports, “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was (Jn 11:5).” Jesus understood the thoughts of the Father and knew that his friend would die so that others might believe. He knew that even death glorified God. And still, he wept.

Why Does Jesus Weep?

Why does the resurrection and the Word become flesh, grieve? Why as John reports was Jesus, “deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled (11:38).”  He was moved by love. Allowing the crowd to interpret Jesus’s action for us, John offers the following commentary on Jesus’s tears: “So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” Deep soul wrenching tears do not convey unbelief but love. To grieve is to express that goodness and sweetness has been lost. It does not deny the goodness that is to come nor the wisdom that has brought us to the point of tears and aching, but rather affirms the unsatisfactory nature of this broken world and our longing for Christ to come again (and to borrow another’s phrase) and “make everything sad untrue.” As the puritan John Flavel noted, “There is no sin in complaining to God…Griefs are eased by groans and heart-pressures relieved by utterances.”

In other words, faith does not call the believer to vanquish grief from his psyche but rather grants him the assurances needed to safely express his anguish. He does not have to fear that his soul altering loss will forever trap him in that dark and swirling vortex of depression. Jesus conquered the tomb and has prepared a mansion for us. As Jesus told Martha, “Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live,  and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die (Jn 11:25-26).” With heaven secured, the believer can confidently lay claim to the promise of Psalm 23:4 which states, “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.” We do not grieve apart from Jesus but with Jesus, knowing that grief finds its end, its telos, in the steadfast love of our Lord (1 Thess 4:13). He will guide us home. In other words, the resurrection and God’s sovereignty are not antithetical to grief but the very bumpers that keep us from rolling into the gutters of hopelessness as we traverse the lanes of grief. If ever there should be a people that was comfortable with the uncomfortable nature of tears, it should be the people of Jesus.

Jesus wept. May we go and do likewise.

Peter Witkowski Pain & Suffering

Ponytails, Buns, & The Blessing of Small Mercies

Grief finds its way into even the smallest cracks. Having suffered through the bangs and large rim glasses of the 90s, my late wife longed to protect our girls from the world of bowl haircuts. Always possessing an eye for artistic design, April delighted in doing the girls up like Elsa or Belle and in sending them off to school with some new braid that she had picked up from a YouTube tutorial. One needed to only look at my girls’ hair to know that they had a mom that loved them.

Now, such glances reveal them to be some of the tiniest victims of this world’s brokenness…to be motherless. Though April longed to impart some basic hair skills to our eldest daughter, April’s final demise proved so quick and so violent and my daughter so young, that my dear bride could not teach my then kindergartener (much less her little sister) the ins and outs of braiding, brushing, and updos. At her death, April had to entrust their innocent little locks to my calloused hands. Though my little sister has done her best to educate me on the finer points of brushing and even braiding (don’t ask), I remain a rather incompetent hairdresser. Now, every knotted tangle and slightly imperfect ponytail serves a fresh reminder of what was and what is no more.

Though grief has seeped into this mundane rhythm of our lives, goodness has still managed to sprout out of this tiny manifestation of brokenness. In case you’re wondering, I do not reference my hair skills. They still serve as one of the greatest impetuses for the girl’s prayer life.

Rather with each passing day, I have seen my girls embrace the sweet, feminine resolve which so defined their mother and which so enriched our lives the last years. The girls have pushed through my world of Churchill bobbleheads and autographed football helmets and have begun to craft their own ‘ice cream buns,’ braids, and complex ponytails. This little grace which April and I feared would disappear after her death has resurfaced in the most sincere and sweetest of ways. Even in a bun, one can discover the mercies of God.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. – James 1:17

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Why I Don’t Talk to April But Pray

When my dear April ceased to breathe, a piercing emptiness settled over my home and my soul. Where once there had been laughter, playful banter, and deep theological reflection now there was only thick, sticky, and suffocating silence.

As my heart broke under the weight of April’s death, I longed to be heard, to pour out my heart without reserve and without concern of time, schedule, or setting. But when I asked aloud, “Where are you, my love?” the air brought back no reply.

Why I Generally Don’t Talk to April

Though some have suggested that I trade my past marital dialogues for a therapeutic monologue, I find the option rather uncompelling if not troubling. I have no idea how April would respond to the experiences, concerns, hopes, worries, and fears that I now carry about with me. I can certainly speculate about how she might react to this or that. But as all good historians know, such speculations prove to be anachronistic and wholly inauthentic. They are nothing more than the manifestations of our imaginations on to reality which by logical necessity distort reality. We cannot project out without either adding to or taking away from what would be real. Such imaginary interactions with our dead loved ones are to reality what orcs are to men.

But even if she were to interact with my ramblings from heaven, she would have little to share with me for she is perfect, and I (as my kids will happily attest to) am not. As Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” The struggles, fears, worries, hopes, and desires that I wish to process aloud with her, the things the make me yearn for her open ear, derive from my incomplete knowledge of the Lord and from my sinful frailty. April no longer shares in those things, nor can she relate to my incompleteness for she knows the eternal joy of completeness. She has crossed the Jordan. Even if she could respond to my mumblings, I could no more understand her knowledge than a three-year-old could understand the terminology used to develop rocket science. As Paul noted of his vision of heaven, “he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” And what she could share with me has already been shared with me through the Scriptures. As Jesus said in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them (Lk 16:29).”

This is not to say that April has no knowledge of me nor awareness of what happens in my life or in the lives of our dear children while she awaits Christ’s return in heaven. Scripture seems to indicate some heavenly awareness of earthly things. But while her love for us and us for her remains, we have no meaningful way to communicate. Death has separated us until it will one day again unite us. Until then, I must embrace the reality of her absence.

Why I Pray

But I do not have to embrace the silence. Though I have lost the companionship of my April for a time, I am not alone. My cries do not go unheard. The Psalmist offers all who grieve a glorious hope writing, “The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.” I still process my life out loud. I cry out to the Lord through the penetrating silence that has enveloped my bedroom, kitchen, car, office, and even the church sanctuary. When I am alone and in need of help, I talk to the God who is there in the silence, bottling my tears as I weep through the night, extending grace to me as I argue with him through the day, and filling my heart with hope as I plead for fresh signs of his goodness and love. In other words, I do not bottle up my emotions but rather audibly process them with the Lord. The Puritan John Flavel who discovered the goodness of this process a few hundred years before me wrote,

To whom should children go but to their father, to make their moan…Did we complain more to God, he would complain less of us, and quickly abate the matters of our complaint.

Oh friends, it is sweet to process one’s life through prayer. Indeed, to talk with God is to commune with him and to experience the truth, love, and grace that transforms our lives.

However, such practices are not unique to widowers or to the grieving. As one theologian noted,

Invoking God, calling on him in prayer, isn’t an emergency measure…something that we turn to in extremity, at the hour of death or disappointment or depression. Calling on God’s name accompanies all of human life and all human activity.

Or to borrow from the apostle Peter, all of us are to cast our cares upon Christ because he cares for us (1 Pt 5:7).

What April Knew

Towards the end of her life as April verbally processed her fears with me, she would at times bring our conversations to a conclusion and kindly say, “I don’t expect an answer from you, Peter.” The comment unnerved me. I was her husband…her best friend…her truest confidant…her pastor. Surely, I should have some answer…some hope to offer…some word to say. But with each passing day, I have come to increasingly appreciate her wisdom in those moments. My shoulders could not carry all her burdens. Nor could her’s carry mine. They were not designed to. But Christ’s could. To Him, she turned.

A few weeks later when I lost my April, my heart shattered into a million pieces like a glass striking a hard kitchen tile. Nothing made sense. Everything hurt and was out of place. But I was not alone. Though he crushed me, my God did not leave me nor forsake me. He heard me. He hears me.

Don’t talk to the dead who cannot help us as they await the resurrection. Talk to the God who hears!