Friday's Faith - Earth's Battlefield - Reweaving the Shattered Pieces of Our Life

Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia ~Pablo Picasso

Friday's Faith

Earth's Battlefield

Reweaving the Shattered Pieces of Our Life

In child-loss grief, our very foundation is blown out from under us, shattering into thousands of tiny pieces. It is our grief work to, with God's help, reweave all these thousands of pieces back together again into a cohesive tapestry that reflects the true character of God instead of the characterization that is easy to form of Him when we're bereft and in the throes of watching our assumptive beliefs scatter from here to yon. Below is page three of three pages I wrote to my child in which I reweave the scattered pieces of my view of God's work in her life despite such work not lining up exactly with what I thought it would look like...

Page 3 of My 3-Page Letter to My Child

Earth's Battlefield

Not deliv'rance from, but vic'try in trial,

Not intermittent, but perpetual...

We serve our God on earth's battlefield;

God conquered all; you live, Mommy limps still.

God never said th' battle would be easy,

That carrying my cross wouldn't leave me queasy,

And that I wouldn't spend ev'ry day on earth grieving.

But He did promise He'd answer my prayer,

So when I leave this earth, I'll meet you in the air;

We'll hug, we'll cry, we'll laugh as He takes us There.

We'll be together forever, held in God's loving care,

And there'll be no more crying

in God's Land so fair,

And there'll be no more dying;

Christ throws Vile One in Lion's Lair,

And we'll praise Father, Son, and Spirit

with all our family There!

Pablo Picasso's Guernica, thanks to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picasso

Guernica, 1937, Museo Reina Sofia

Arguably Picasso’s most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War—Guernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. Asked to explain its symbolism, Picasso said, “It isn’t up to the painter to define the symbols. Otherwise it would be better if he wrote them out in so many words! The public who look at the picture must interpret the symbols as they understand them.”

Poem - Earth's Battlefield, Part 3 of 3-page letter to my child - Angie Bennett Prince - 7/26/2011