Hope Challengers: Loss
Ice Breaker:
Loss can affect us all in many different ways, it may be that we have a loss of health, job, relationship, memory and perhaps most devastating, the loss of the closest person to us, whether that be a partner, child, friend.
Share in you group, the losses that you have found hard in your life and how your faith has helped you, alongside other support?
Read 2 Corinthians 1 v. 1-11
The bible is full of assurance and comfort on the theme of loss, from Psalms that help us cry out in our darkest moments to words of encouragement that help us to cope. The pain of loss, in whatever form it takes, can be overwhelming and can lead us into experiencing different emotions, which may include anger, disbelief, guilt, shock and at times profound sadness. It may disrupt our physical wellbeing, making it harder to sleep, eat and even think straight……all these feelings are natural and every one of us in our lifetime will go through times of ‘loss’.
Background
In our first reading Paul is writing to the church in Corinth once again, it’s a personal letter, thought of as the most autobiographical of his writings. He begins with the familiar greeting of ‘Grace and Peace’ words we often skirt over but these are important words…..Grace gathers up all that God promises us, gives us. Therefore, anything that bears the fruit of his spirit (love, joy, forgiveness, wisdom etc.) is from God. There his peace will also be found, deep within, as we have a heart that rests in God, is not driven by the pressures of others and is confident that God is at work, bringing us a calm, serene and untroubled spirit.
Q.1 Are you able to talk about how you experience Grace and Peace in your life?
Study
In our first reading, two word seem prominent, affliction and comfort:
Affliction is perhaps what today we might call pressure, stress, having to go through difficult situations. The feeling of being trapped, bringing on anxiety and concern about what lies ahead. Paul of course also experienced this, his culture and circumstances would have been different to ours but none the less all humanity has suffered from the beginning.
Q.2 What comes to mind when you read about ‘affliction’ and maybe in two’s talk about one area of your life where you feel you have suffered (if you are able to?)
Comfort is more than a little word of encouragement from Paul, it means ‘to strengthen’ an what the words of this passage clearly convey to is what Paul experienced in the strengthening by God’s presence with him, giving him assurance and peace, which enabled him to live through the affliction he was encountering. The Holy Spirit brings comfort, we pray for comfort when we experience loss…..it’s not a woolly plea, it’s a real desire on our part to have God flood us with his strength at a time when we cannot see how we might even cope with the next few hours.
Q.3 how have you experienced God’s comfort in times of loss in your life?
Our series is finding our hope in God….being sustained, as we have looked at other weeks, it seem easier to me to see hope in community. For there are times in our lives when the searing loss we feel will overwhelm our whole being, like a flower pelted by the rain, until it can stand no more.
It’s then, that we need those who can hold us in community, bring words of comfort, practical help as comfort and acknowledge that as we navigate this dark valley, we will in time see God’s comfort for ourselves.
Q.4 what is your response to this?
Please now read John 11 v.17-34
In this well-known passage, Jesus arrives long after Lazarus has died?
· Why do you think he arrived when he did?
(Had not been told before, knew he could raise his friend from the dead?)
Again we are told (v. 19) that others had come to comfort Mary & Martha, there immediate reaction is anger; that Jesus had not come before.
· How often do you cry out in anger to God?
(Is it not good to be real with God in our relationship, why would we hide how we feel?)
Jesus says a powerful thing to them, he assures them that Lazarus will rise, in a very calm way and then says ‘I am the resurrection and the life, those who believes in me will live, even though they die’ He then asks this question, which I ask all of us.
· Do you believe this?
Martha does believe and when Jesus sees Mary, fall at his feet, we see the humanity and divinity of God burst out as in v. 35 Jesus wept……..
· How do you feel when you read this, does it bring God’s hope to you, that in all our sufferings, he knows our deepest emotion and also feels as we do?
Conclusion
None of us will avoid ‘loss’ in our lives and as we saw at the beginning it will come in many forms. It will affect us all differently, we will cope as well as we are able to at the time. But what is evident throughout the bible and especially as we look at God’s hope in our lives at this time of crisis, is that God’s love will never end, we can never be separated from that love…even by death, and that no matter what we face ahead or have been through…we will one day come out of the valley and when we look back, it will only be then that we will see Jesus who has been beside us all the way.
This takes time…..it’s irritating to be told that, but there is a truth in time being a great healer and God is ‘time’ and he will hold us and love us, far more that we will ever comprehend, and that will be our hope
Prayer
Spend some time praying for those in your group who are experiencing loss at the moment and then perhaps, if you would like to, close with this prayer.
Father, may we long not for the smoothness of sand, which looks good and feels flat and is easy to walk on but will not withstand the storm.
May we build our hopes on You.
Though you may not prevent the storms, you will keep us firm within them, even if we are battered, we cannot fall……except deeper into a crevice in the rock; deeper into you.