Remembering & Healing our grief
Connecticut DS Ken Kieffer offered a powerful message during the memorial service yesterday. It took us through the pain of loss and left us in a place of immeasurable hope. Here's what I wrote about it in Daily Update of the Vision:
“Our faith is not an insurance policy against adversity,” Rev. Ken Kieffer told the audience gathered for the Memorial Service Thursday. “But God is on our side, beside us . . . even when we get our butts kicked all over the place.”
The morning service was a time to remember the clergy and clergy family members who have died since last annual conference.
In his message based on Romans 8:38-39, Kieffer told the story of two young brothers who were inseparable until a drunk driver killed the younger one. The older brother’s grief sent him to his brother’s favorite hiding place – deep under his bed. Despite repeated attempts, nothing could coax the brother from the space, until a baseball coach crawls down under the bed with him.
We may often feel that isolated from God after a death like this, Kieffer said. “Our friends don’t know what to say. Should we act like they never died, or never lived?” We may often feel that much of the world is against us – “Al-Qaeda, Bernie Madoff, human traffickers, gun runners, gang bangers.” But for Paul it doesn’t matter who is against us, because “God is on our side.”
Christ didn’t crawl under a wooden bed, but he did commit himself to die on a wooden cross. “He didn’t do it for loss, to go away,” said Kieffer, “he did it to be with us.”