Friday's Faith - "My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

Friday's Faith 

"My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?"

Fortunately for us, The Compassionate Friends website allows us to go back and hear webinars that we have had to miss due to conflicting schedules. So Tommy and I went back yesterday to hear Dennis Apple's webinar (You too can hear Dennis by clicking http://www.compassionatefriends.org/News_Events/Special-Events/Webinars.aspx

and scroll down to the video at the bottom of the page.).

Dennis, himself a Congregational pastor, felt like many of us child-loss grievers after the death of his son when he cried out,

"My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?" 

After hearing Dennis's poignant presentation, I ran across a quote from another Child-Loss father who captures the same essence of the cry in these words:

“How is faith to endure, O God, when you allow all this scraping and tearing on us? You have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song--all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you have not abandoned us, explain Yourself. 

"We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer we catch sight of God himself scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God.”

~ Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament for a Son

Picture, from Dennis L. Apple's TCF power point presentation