Gospel.com Blog

One Biblical concept that I, and I suspect many Americans like me, have trouble relating to is the yearning for a homeland that is so vividly expressed in the book of Lamentations and other Old Testament texts. The calamitous destruction of the nations of Israel and Judah had a profound effect on generations of Biblical writers, and influenced the Jews’ hopes and expectations regarding the promised Messiah.

There are populations and ethnic groups today that can relate to this fervent longing better than I, a middle-class Midwestern American, can hope to. In this Slice of Infinity devotional, Jill Carattini discusses one such people group, and what this sense of “homelessness” means to us as Christians:

Such intensity in the name of place and homeland is not unique to [Native Americans]. For the people of ancient Israel, the relationship between land and faith was equally profound. The destructive loss of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians in 587 B.C.E. was infinitely more to them than the loss of home and property. For them it was the loss of faith, identity, even God Himself. Walter Brueggemann writes of Jerusalem’s destruction: “The deep sense of displacement evoked by the loss led to the conclusion in some quarters that all the old promises of YHWH to Israel–and consequently Israel’s status as YHWH’s people and Jerusalem’s status as YHWH’s city–were placed in deep jeopardy.” [...]

The writer of Lamentations gives voice to the uncertainty of exile, the finality of a destroyed Jerusalem, and the death of home in the deepest sense. He also dares give voice in the midst of exile to the promise of restoration–in the assurance of coming home to the one who never left. No matter the place of loss, wandering, or exile, no matter the distance, no matter the depth, the arm of God is not too short to save.

Is this sense of “homelessness,” this longing for a homeland (either spiritual or physical), something you can relate to? How has that affected your Christian walk?

Grief is a terrible, personal experience—everybody goes through it at some point in their life, but it must be processed by each person individually, personally, and privately. Your experience of grief is different than mine, and vice versa.

Grief has been on my mind this week. Not because I’m grieving myself right now, but because two prominent online writers have been chronicling with heart-wrenching openness their experiences with death, loss, and grief. Both accounts are worth reading, and highlight the ways that one’s spiritual worldview affects the way you process the unspeakable pain of losing a loved one.

The first is a series of articles by Meghan O’Rourke (a critic at Slate) journaling her experience of grief after the death of her mother. O’Rourke’s essays are fascinating and moving. While she doesn’t spell out all her religious befiefs, she seems to be writing from a generally agnostic perspective.

The second such account can be found in the ongoing blogging of Amy Welborn, a popular Catholic blogger whose husband died unexpectedly earlier this year. I’m amazed at Welborn’s ability to write so eloquently and publicly about such a painful experience, but I’m glad she’s doing so: her accounts of her family relationships, church interactions, and personal faith in the aftermath of her husband’s death are profoundly insightful. Her account is spread across many blog posts, but many of them can be found here. See in particular her post about what it means for her to “give something up” for Lent after her loss, and another about learning when and how to share “the cross you bear” with others.

Both accounts are worth reading, and as Ross Douthat recently pointed out, they make for interesting counterparts: one approaching death from a secular perspective, the other from the perspective of Christian faith. As Lent continues, and as we think and pray about the grief, loss, death, and hope that marked Easter, it seems appropriate to ponder these things.

(For more resources to help you through grief and loss, see the grief page at Gospel.com.)