Lent: Good Grief.

This is a post about Lent. I’m only a few years into living by the church calendar. I realize that many of my readers aren’t there, and that’s fine. But I also want to shed a little light on the season of Lent and share a little of what I’m learning through it. 

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A few days back I made a statement that I’ve been thinking about. 

“We are dust, but our return to dust is evidence of a major problem.”

I’ve been thinking about this because it’s Lent, the time where we settle into the idea of our mortality. Lent, after all kicks off with an ashen, cross-shaped tattoo on our forehead. The tattoo comes with the words: “You are dust. To dust you shall return.”

A good friend has been saying that “Lent is a time where we learn to grieve.” It’s a time between two statements: 

“You are dust. You’ll be dust again” 

and 

“He is risen.”

This is the perspective of Christian grief. Loved ones die. It ought not be this way and so we wait. And, just as we wait for Easter during Lent, so we wait for the resurrection of the dead on the last day. 

Lent trains us in grief and waiting…

Losing Focus

In Dr. Younger's History of Israel course today, he shared this pastoral note.

Solomon undertakes the building of YHWH's temple. This is a big deal. David wanted to, but YHWH prohibited him.

In addition to building a temple, Solomon built a palace for himself. This makes sense as his father established Jerusalem as the capital only several years below.

In 1 Kings 6-8 we have the narrative of Solomon's building projects.

Here are the details as recorded in the text.

Measurement	YHWH’s Temple	Solomon’s Palace
length	60	100
width	20	50
height	30	30
time	7 years	13 years

Obviously, the palace is much larger than the temple. But what's not quite so obvious is the time difference. The palace took 6 years longer to "build" than the temple. But the size difference between temple and palace doesn't warrant nearly doubling the amount of time. So what took so long? Interior decorating.

Both of these not-so-subtly indict Solomon as a man who is more concerned with his own name than YHWH's.



On top of these indicting numbers, we also have the structure of the text itself. It also reflects Solomon's shortcomings.

1 Kings 6 and 8 tell the story of the building of the temple. Chapter 7 tells the story of the palace. So, here we have a temple building narrative that gets interrupted by the narrative of building the palace.

Or, to quote Dr. Younger, "In the middle of the building of the temple, we have a narrative of Solomon losing his focus."

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And, in keeping with a Solomonic theme: There's nothing new under the sun.

We, too, build for ourselves,
   bigger
      newest
         nicer

when we should be building for the Kingdom.

Death: Not the Way It's Supposed to Be

Dad’s been dead for almost three months now. It was only a few days ago that I had my first good cry about it. This is the first of a series of entries that I wrote in the days following dad’s death. 

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Three weeks ago now, my dad died. As it goes with deaths, I’ve had moments where it’s been difficult to get used to a new kind of life. 

Moments like yesterday when I built a really cool train track for the boys. What made it cool was all of the bridges. The piers for these bridges were granddad’s Christmas present to the boys. It was less than a month ago that dad and I were in the shop cutting and sanding the piers. I really wanted to FaceTime him so he could see the boys enjoying them. 

On Tuesdays and Fridays I hang out with the boys all day. Before he died, I would give dad a call after the boys woke from their naps. Now I’ve got to find something to do after naps and before dinner.

“It’s the little things,” a buddy told me. And he’s right. It’s normal life without dad that’s the hardest. 

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Death.

Dead. 

Die.

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Even seeing these words on the screen is hard. 

And so we insulate ourselves even from the words. 

Just tonight we had some girls from T’s dorm over for dinner. K is a Yooper. (That’s a resident of the U. P., which, for my southern friends, is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.) K grew up deer hunting. Her roommate, M, grew up in the suburbs. During our post-dinner conversation, M realized that the deer in their freezer was killed by K. (Or one of K’s kin––they killed so many last season that K couldn’t remember.) M was shocked. She repeated––loud enough for our neighbors to hear: “You killed the deer in our freezer?!” 

The irony is that M had a pile of chicken bones on her plate. 

The problem wasn’t meat, but killing an animal. 

Aren't we all a little like this? The disconnect in M’s mind between the pile of bones on her plate and the meat in their freezer highlights how we insulate ourselves from death and dead bodies. And this insulation is thickest when dealing with the death of the people who are closest to us. 

Perhaps it’s obvious (and an obvious understatement): We are uncomfortable with death. We are uncomfortable and so we hide, repress, and avoid it. 

As I’ve been living in this uneasy space, I’ve been encouraged to hold two things in tension. 

The first is that I shouldn’t hide. I can’t build a track without a tinge of grief. Each Tuesday afternoon (so far) has  brought a cloud of loss and loneliness. But no matter how uncomfortable I am, I have to be sure that I’m not hiding. (As an aside, I'm so grateful that, on Tuesday evenings, we meet with our house-group from church––a place where I’m drawn out of hiding and into the life of community.) 

The second is that I’ve actually come to appreciate the fact that death should make us uncomfortable. It would have been easy to point to the bones on M’s plate and say “Seriously!? Don’t you see the irony? Death is the way its supposed to be.” Or, more close to home, to touch the cold hands in the coffin or point to the fresh pile of dirt and say: “You knew it was coming. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” 

After all, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Christians believe that this is a lie––or at least only part of the truth. Death should make us uncomfortable because death is not the way it’s supposed to be. We are dust, but our return to dust is evidence of a major problem. 


I’ll explore this problem more in the days to come. But this is a good place to sit for a while: faced with our own mortality and with the sin that causes it. And now, as we remember Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, it’s good for us to be faced with the sin that caused his death, too. It is there, after all, that the problem meets its solution.

My First Tears

I have a confession: Saturday I shed my first tears about dad’s death. Those close to me have been so supportive. They’ve encouraged me to be wherever I am whenever I’m there. They’ve given me space to grieve in whatever emotional state I’ve been in. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to be present with my emotions. Even so, I was somewhat surprised that it took the tears so long to come. Here is my confession. 

Saturday was beautifully sunny day. Though it was only 30 degrees, it looked like it should be 75. So there I was, plugging away, learning the Hebrew of Psalms 73-89. (I hope to make at least one post about this soon.) As I often do, I was listening to a Pandora station that I’ve tweaked for well over 5 years––crafting it through thumbs up and thumbs down. Needless to say, the station plays a large smattering of music. (Right now it’s playing “I’ll Fly Away" by Allison Krauss and Gillian Welch.) 

Then it happened: Pandora played “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King. This is not a song that’s especially close to my heart (or to dad’s), but the psalms of lament, the day, the sunshine, and finally the song stirred something within me––a deep and beloved memory:

When I was a kid, Saturdays would roll around and we’d often load up in the pickup and drive to OKC for Taco Bell. Now this was back in the day before every small town had a Taco Bell / KFC combo so it was quite a treat. Oh how dad, Matthew, and I loved that hot sauce :). Seriously, we’d drive 70 miles for Taco Bell. Then I’d fall asleep in the back seat as the Oklahoma plains passed in the window. And for most of those miles, we’d be listening to oldies. 

And so I wept. I grieved dad’s death. I grieved the loss of my childhood (a really great childhood). I missed my mom and brother. But mostly I missed dad. And so I wept.

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In the days following dad’s death, I wrote quite a lot. Most of it I wrote hoping to publish it here. But, in keeping with my theme of being present with my emotions, I don’t know how much of this will actually make publication. I haven't yet felt right. But there are some things I’d like to share. Maybe soon.