OUT OF SORROW.

 "As He approached the town gate, a dead person was being carried out - the only son of his mother, and she was a widow. And a large crowd from the town was with her" (Luke 7:11).

Pain and despair are threads that run through us as we move through our journey of bereavement. In pain and despair we can echo the words of the old spiritual, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen. Nobody knows my sorrow". We may have been moving through our journey slowly, doing well, when suddenly the reality of our loss, this death, hits again! There is no going back, no recapturing or retrieving what was lost. Our loved one is gone. The pain invades and grips, and the fullness we were beginning to feel seeps out. Emptiness takes over. The wound opens wide and we despair. It's as if all life stops again.

One does not have to be married for 64 years to feel the pain and despair of death. It is not time, but our closeness to our loved one that increases our vulnerability and opens us to deeper pain and despair... Yet when we confront our pain and despair and begin to accept the loss, surrendering ourselves to God in our powerlessness, then pain and despair can give way to hope. The unwanted pain can be accepted and transformed. When we accept our pain as our own, suffering can grow into compassion. It's as if the heart opens, and out of sorrow come warmth and joy. (Philip Williams).

The life and death of each of us has influence on others:"If we live, we live to the Lord; and  if we die, we die to the Lord. So, whether we live or die, we belong to the Lord (Romans 14:8).