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Book review: “When Will I Stop Hurting? Dealing with a Recent Death”
Copyright 2013 by Bob Rogers
When Will I Stop Hurting? Dealing with a Recent Death by June Cerza Kolf is one of the most helpful, compassionate books I have read to comfort someone who is grieving. As a pastor, I have given several resources to people to help them with the grieving process. A church member who had lost her mother told me that this book was even more helpful to her than what I had given her, so I had to read it myself. Now I see why. Kolf writes as someone who not only understands the grief process, but has experienced it herself. She has a wonderful balance of encouragement and specific, practical advice. It is a resource that a grieving person will want to keep nearby to refer to again and again, and share with others.
The book is divided into three chapters: The Wound, The Flood, and the Rainbow. The first chapter, “The Wound,” explains the hurt and feelings of grief. Grieving readers will find themselves saying, “Yep, that’s me.” Yet they will find it comforting to see how what they are experiencing is normal, and they are not going crazy.
The second chapter, “The Flood,” explains the stages of grief and gives practical advice about making decisions and taking care of oneself through that process.
The third chapter, “The Rainbow,” is an inspiring and practical explanation of how one let’s go of grief and moves on in life.
There is an appendix that gives nearly 20 exercises with a “To Do” list to handle guilt, crying, loss of sleep, remembering your loved one, etc.
However, as good as this book is, I feel that Kolf could have strengthened the book with comforting scripture. She does mention two Bible verses, and talks about God throughout the book. On page 41, she gently recommends “a divine friend who loves me no matter what…This friend, Jesus, is available to everyone through prayer.” Since she chose to mention her faith, she could have strengthened this by citing scripture such as Jesus’ words about being with us and preparing a place in heaven (John 14:1-6), Paul’s words about finding comfort in God by comforting others (2 Corinthians 1:6), or Kind David’s beloved Shepherd’s Psalm, Psalm 23. I have seen people physically relax upon hearing the Twenty-third Psalm. Scriptures such as these could make this wonderful, helpful book even more “hope-ful” to the grieving reader.
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Taking it to the bank
Copyright 2013 by Bob Rogers
When I went off to seminary, I moved from Woodville, Mississippi, to New Orleans, Louisiana. It was only a few hours’ drive, but the two cultures were light-years apart.
I had been serving Woodville Baptist Church as their youth minister. Woodville was, and still is, a small county-seat town located south of Natchez in the extreme southwest corner of the state. Woodville’s claim to fame was that it was the boyhood home of Jefferson Davis. Woodville also boasts the first standard-sized railroad line ever built in America, which once was used to ship cotton down to the Mississippi River at St. Francisville, Louisiana. Although it was a tiny town, they had very active Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and Catholic churches, each one claiming to be the oldest of their denomination in the state. You could leave your house unlocked in Woodville and not worry about anybody breaking in.
I took my new bride from Woodville to New Orleans. We settled into an apartment belonging to New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, and I promptly went to a big New Orleans bank to open a checking account.
The bank clerk took one look at my check from Woodville, and said, “I can’t deposit this check. It doesn’t have an account number.” I said, “That bank doesn’t use account numbers. They go by your name.” The clerk sarcastically replied, “This is 1980. Nobody does that anymore.”
I just shrugged and said, “They do. Why don’t you call them and ask them?”
So the bank clerk took my challenge and left me sitting at his desk while he went off to another room and called. In a few minutes, he came back with a sheepish grin on his face.
I asked, “Well, did they tell you that my check was good?”
He said, “Yeah, and the guy also said to tell you hello.”
It’s nice to be known by your name rather than just a number, isn’t it?
God knows your name. Revelation 10:15 tells us that he has the names of all who believe in Jesus Christ written in his Book of Life. And beside the name of each believer, that book has these words written: “Paid in Full,” because Christ made full payment for our sins upon the cross (1 Corinthians 6:20). That’s one book that I’ve made sure has my name. And you can take that to the bank!
Post-election thoughts
I wrote the following blog on November 7, 2008, when President Obama was first elected. It seems appropriate today to republish:
However you voted in the recent election, let us remember that rulers change on earth, but God still reigns over all. Isaiah was probably worried about the future when King Uzziah died after reigning nearly all of Isaiah’s life, but we read in Isaiah 6:1 that “in the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord…” He got a vision of God’s greatness, and forgot about the change in power on earth. R
egarding our new president-elect and other newly elected leaders, 1 Timothy 2:1-2 commands us to pray for those in authority. Some people might object that they don’t agree with the politics of their leaders. I share that concern, particularly on the issues of protecting life and marriage. However, let us remember that in Paul’s day, their political leaders were throwing the Christians to the lions, and Paul still said we should pray for them. So should we.
Who is to blame for the theater shooting in Colorado?
Copyright 2012 by Bob Rogers
The Dark Knight Rises is the name of the much-anticipated third Batman movie in the wildly popular films produced by Christopher Nolan. But it was a dark night in a different sense in a theater in Aurora, Colorado, where gunman James Holmes took to the stage himself and shot 70 people, killing at least 12.
When such horrific tragedies happen, we gasp, we hug our children, we lower our flags, we pray, and we ask, “Why?”
Soon a number of scapegoats will be brought forth to be sacrificed at the altar of our need to blame someone or something.
Some will blame a lack of gun control. They will say that if we had stricter gun control, this man could not have obtained so many weapons. However, mass shootings have occurred in other nations that have strict gun control.
Some will blame a lack of security, since the gunman carried so much artillery into the theater. Perhaps improvements in security can be made but the police and security guards cannot be everywhere.
Some will blame violence in the movies, saying that it desensitizes the viewer and can lead to copy-cat actions. Some news reports today say that the shooter was dressed as the Joker, lending some credence to this theory. However, millions of other people have seen the Batman films without having an urge to hurt anybody.
Others will blame the man’s upbringing, environment, how he may have been treated at the school where he dropped out, and so on.
But in playing the “blame game,” we often fail to look at the greatest reason for the actions of James Holmes and for each of us: the human heart.
Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV) says, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” Jesus said that evil comes from within, out of the heart (Mark 7:21).
When the Gospel of John describes how Judas Iscariot got up from the Last Supper, left Jesus and the other disciples, and stepped outside to betray Christ, John adds this short sentence: “And it was night.” (John 13:30). John was speaking of the spiritual darkness of that moment. But after that dark night, a light arose, because this Jesus who died on the cross also arose from the dead to defeat evil and give us hope.
The greatest need that mankind has is not gun control, more police, controls over movies, or psychologists. Our greatest need is for a Savior who can change the heart. He alone can change our dark nights into bright mornings.
Ten things that will not be in heaven
Copyright 2012 by Bob Rogers
TEN THINGS THAT WILL NOT BE IN HEAVEN:
1. No sea. (Revelation 21:1)
2. No tears. (Revelation 21:4)
3. No cemeteries. (Revelation 21:4 – no death)
4. No hospitals. (Revelation 21:4 – no pain)
5. No temple. (Revelation 21:22 -not needed because God is there on His throne).
6. No sun. (Revelation 21:23- God is the light.)
7. No night. (Revelation 21:25; 22:5 – and thus no evil or fear.)
8. No locks. (Revelation 21:25)
9. No sin. (Revelation 21:8; 22:15)
10. No unbelievers. (Revelation 21:27 – no admission unless their name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, written in the grace-soaked blood of Jesus.)
Easter Sunday, the day of surprise!
Copyright 2012 by Bob Rogers
Many people who doubt the truth of Jesus’ resurrection say something like this: “People in the first century were superstitious, simple-minded people, and they were much more likely to believe in a resurrection than modern people are today. So probably something else happened, and they just wanted so badly for Jesus to live that they convinced themselves, maybe even had a hallucination that Jesus was raised from the dead.” (Never mind that many different people testified to seeing Him alive, even 500 at once, and mass crowds do not have hallucinations.) But when we read the gospels, a totally different picture appears. The early disciples were just as surprised then as we would be now.
Mark could hardly have used more words to describe how surprised they were. Mark 16:5 says they were “alarmed.” The word means to be both amazed and alarmed. The angel calmed them by saying, “Don’t be alarmed… You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here.”
Mark 16:8 says, “Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”
“Alarmed.” “Bewildered.” “Afraid.” Mark is letting us know that they were totally surprised by the resurrection.
Celsus, a Greek philosopher who lived in the second century A.D., was hostile to Christianity and wrote books arguing against Christianity. Listen to what Celsus considered to be his strongest argument against the resurrection. He said that the written accounts of the resurrection are based on the testimony of women—and we all know that women are hysterical. Many of Celsus’s readers agreed. It was a major problem in ancient societies, because women were looked down upon; they didn’t give much credibility to a woman’s testimony.
Timothy Keller points out that if Mark was making up these stories, he would never have written that women were the first eyewitnesses. Yet we read in Mark 16:1 that it was Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome who brought spices to anoint Jesus’ body. No men came, despite all that Jesus had said about rising on the third day. And even the women were not expecting a resurrection; they just wanted to give Him a proper Jewish burial. The only reason Mark would write this, that no men were there to first learn of the resurrection, is because that’s exactly what happened.
It completely surprised the first disciples. They never expected it. Yet it really happened.
And because it happened, world history is changed. Time is divided from B.C. to A.D. because of Jesus. Within five weeks, 10,000 Jews in Jerusalem were following Jesus, and within 300 years, the Roman empire came under the sway of Christianity.
Best of all, because of Jesus’ resurrection, we don’t have to escape reality, we can face reality! So many people try to escape their painful lives by diversions and entertainment. But Jesus’ resurrection changes all that. The sick man doesn’t have to transport himself into the imaginary world of a basketball star who slam dunks the ball; the sick man knows that in Christ, one day he will walk on streets of gold! The unloved woman does not have to escape into a world of romance novels; one day because of her faith in Christ she will be in a place where everybody loves and accepts her, and she will see the One who died to save her.
Surprise! Surprise! Easter is not a myth at all. It really happened, and because it happened, we can face reality.
Saturday, the day of waiting
Copyright 2012 by Bob Rogers
Like Wednesday of Holy Week, nothing is recorded in Mark’s Gospel about what happened on Saturday, but we know about the day because Mark 15:42 tells us they buried Jesus before sundown on Friday, so they could rest on Saturday, the Sabbath. Nothing more is recorded until Mark 16:1 tells what happened on the first day of the week, which was Easter Sunday. (Matthew 27:62-66 does record that on Saturday, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, agreed to post guards at the tomb of Christ.) Saturday was a day of waiting, and wondering what would happen next. They had no idea anything good was going to happen the next day. They just had to wait on the Lord. Isaiah 40:31 (KJV) says, “They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength.” Psalm 27:14 says, “Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.” Saturday, the day of waiting, teaches us to wait on the Lord. Waiting can be excruciatingly hard. For a couple of months, my family has been waiting to find out why my father had a spot on his lung that was discovered in January when he had another surgery. Finally, they ran the test on a Friday in late March and the doctor said the outside cells looked fine, but he could not tell if the cells on the inside were cancer, so he needed to send it to the lab and would have the results on Tuesday. On Tuesday, my parents called the clinic and they said they would have to call back, but the nurse never called back. All evening, my parents sat by the phone, and I kept calling to see if they had news. Mom said she was going crazy, sitting by the phone, waiting. They went to bed Tuesday, still not knowing if he had cancer. On Wednesday morning, the nurse called to say the doctor had been sick, but would try to read it that day and give her news. Later that day, the nurse called but got no answer because my parents’ phone wasn’t working. Finally, my mom drove to the clinic, and the nurse explained the good news: the doctor had studied the lab report, and dad had no cancer! Many of you can relate to that, because you have just about gone crazy waiting for something. Maybe you have waited and waited for that loan to come through; maybe you have waited for a test score to see if you passed your class or so you could get a job; maybe you have waited and waited for that guy you are dating to finally pop the question; maybe you have been passed over for a promotion but you’re waiting, hoping it will finally come; maybe you’ve waited and waited for your children to call you and come see you; maybe you waited for medical test results to come back. Waiting can be very, very hard. So you know how the disciples felt that Saturday before Easter when they waited. Maybe you waited but you didn’t get good news like my Dad got. Maybe you were turned down for the loan, failed the test, rejected by your boyfriend or boss or children. Maybe you got the bad news that it was cancer. The disciples who waited that Saturday were expecting bad news, too. They were expecting bad things to happen to them. After all, their leader had been arrested and crucified. But you and I know the rest of the story. We know that on Easter Sunday, they got news more wonderful than they could ever imagine. So as you go through difficult times, remember that as a believer in Jesus, you can wait on the Lord, when you know that even though you may waiting right now like it is Saturday, don’t forget that Sunday is coming!
Bob Rogers 