Today’s
Scripture Reading (May 13, 2017): Psalm 79
In her 1969 book, On Death and Dying, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross postulated
that there were five stages of grief and loss. The stages she identified were
Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally Acceptance. The idea was
that whenever we suffer any catastrophic loss, we move through the five stages from beginning to end. It is quite
simply the way that we are designed – it
is what is supposed to happen to us.
In reading the Bible, we need to be
continually reminded that there are human emotions behind the words –
and while this is true in all of the books of the Bible, maybe it is particularly the case in the Psalms. This Psalm was probably written somewhere around 586
B.C.E., just after the destruction of the Temple and the fall of Jerusalem.
There was a sense of intense loss in the
country. And the tone of the Psalm also tells us that the stages of loss had been engaged. The nation had been in denial about
the situation in Jerusalem ever since the Babylonian had first come into the
city and carried away the best and the brightest that Jerusalem had to offer.
But now, looking at the smoke of the buildings that had been burned by their
enemies, the people of Jerusalem seemed to have moved quickly from denial into
an expression of anger, bargaining and now depression. How long will your anger
burn against your children? How long before the relationship can be mended.
Officially this Psalm is labeled as
a complaint Psalm – the Psalmist is complaining to God about their situation. And it is part of the typical sequence of loss and pain. Someone once commented to me that we need to
be careful in our complaints against God. And I understand the danger, and yet
the Bible itself is filled with complaints. And if Elisabeth Kubler-Ross is
right and these stages are just the way that we are
designed – that these stages are
supposed to happen – then I think that God understands that. He understands our
stages of grief because he is the one who placed those stages inside of us. God knows our pain better than we do.
So, for the Psalmist, this is great news. It means that the complaint he
has in his heart is natural, and, if this is the onset of depression, the poet is
just one step away from the final stage – acceptance. And with the arrival of the last stage of
loss and grief, he can begin to learn from the situation from
which he has now emerged. Acceptance can never be seen as
just a realization that this is life and there is nothing that I can do to
change it. It is not a reliance on the forces of fate that are beyond our
control and tend to lead us toward helplessness. That kind of acceptance can
only result in future failure.
Acceptance of the situation needs to come with
an understanding that we can learn and grow through even adverse circumstances of our
lives.
For the Psalmist, the complaint is a result of the feeling of
abandonment. But God had never left. And when he arrived at acceptance he would
see God and the wealth of things that God had for him – and for his nation. Acceptance
may be the last stage – but it isn’t the end. It is then that we really begin to learn and set up the rest of
our lives.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Psalm
137
No comments:
Post a Comment