More from Nicholas Wolterstorff writing about his grief after his son died in a hiking accident in Germany. He quotes from his book A Lament for a Son, "I am not angry [at God] but baffled and hurt. My wound is an unanswered question. The wounds of all humanity are an unanswered question." This, of course, is the mystery of evil. If God is good what is the source of evil?
Death of a college age son poses different questions than the death of an 82 year old spouse. Why? Why? If God is good how does this happen? We are confronted with the mystery of why bad things happen to good people.
Wolterstorff writes "Eventually, the realization sunk in, all the way down, that he was dead. I had to learn to live around that gaping wound and with that grief. Grief was not just an additional component in my life. I had to live a new kind of life, one for which I had no practice." He had entered what I call 'life in the land of grief in the presence of absence.' He writes "Grief, I have come to think, is wanting the death or destruction of the loved one to be undone, while at the same time knowing it cannot be undone. Grief is wanting the loved on back when one knows he can't come back....My grief was wanting intensely for Eric to be alive when I knew he could not be." Yes, that describes the agony of grief, wanting something desperately that cannot be.
There is more, but needing some time for reflection I'll leave it for the morrow.
Takk for alt,
Al
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