Dr Paul Allen

Speak to God God is not asking for silence. When we suffer and do not understand, he is not demanding the stiff upper lip. He does not object to our groanings, our pleas for help, our desperate whimpers when we can’t even form words. He does not need us to piece ourselves together before we say our Thee’s and Thou’s in formal prayer. He invites us to question him. God is not threatened by our questions, so we should not tell the suffering to silence their complaints. Instead, they must take their accusations straight to God and listen. Everywhere you look in the Hebrew Bible, you’ll see exchanges between God and the patriarchs, prophets, or kings. God does not shrink before our speech. If anything, as we see amid the calamity of invasion at the outset of the prophet Isaiah’s ministry, God invites this dialogue. Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins are like scarlet,       they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson,   ...

Grief is a strange thing. Months, even years after a loss, it can show up unexpectedly. Sometimes, we grieve the loss of a loved one. Other times, we grieve a broken relationship, a shattered dream, or a ministry failure. Loss takes many shapes, affects us in different ways, and often lingers longer than it seems we can stand. The Israelites had a liturgy and structure they followed during times of grief. They wept and wailed. They tore at their clothes. They covered themselves in dust and ashes (Job 1:20; 2:12). They cried out sorrowfully to God. They sang out in lament. In our culture, we’ve forgotten how to grieve. We rush through painful experiences to put them behind us. When others around us grieve, we are uncomfortable with their tears and do whatever we can to distract them. We might even altogether avoid the grief-stricken around us.  But grief is not something to be distracted from, overlooked, or avoided. There’s no timetable and no way to rush through it. Grief is not s...

In 1934, writer Clare Harner, grieving her brother Olin’s death after a sudden illness, published a poem with these lines: “Do not stand by my grave and weep. / I am not there, I do not sleep. / I am a thousand winds that blow / I am the diamond glints in snow. . . . / Do not stand by my grave, and cry—I am not there, I did not die.” Before you criticize Clare for her wishy-washy theology, stop to consider whether you’ve heard or uttered a “more biblical” version of her comforting words yourself. “Don’t cry. She’s in a better place.” Or, in the negative, “God is going to bring something beautiful from his death. Prolonged grief shows a lack of trust in God.” When it comes to death, we all long to tell a different story than the one we truly see through tears, in dust and ashes before us. When we’re neck-deep in trials, we grasp for these platitudes hoping they’ll offer us a lifeline. Whether we’re offering flimsy hope to a friend or to ourselves, the myths we tell ourselves about grief...

On the last day of his vacation, Rob Moll leaned in to kiss his wife, Clarissa, before heading out for a hike in Mount Rainier National Park. “Have fun,” she whispered. “I will,” Rob said. He never returned.  On July 19, 2019, Rob Moll fell to his death on that mountain. Clarissa was left to raise four children alone. She writes, “All of the life we loved together vanished in a moment.” In the three years since Clarissa has walked honestly with Christ and pointed fellow sufferers to the hope that is both here and now as well as for heaven. In her book Beyond the Darkness: A Gentle Guide for Living with Grief and Thriving After Loss, Clarissa Moll offers the bereaved much-needed empathy and seeks to show them and those who would walk beside them how grieving souls can flourish after loss. Sorrow is a dark and painful road. You don’t need to walk it alone. The Bible says that “God is near to the brokenhearted,” but what does that look like when you’re lost in the darkness of agonizin...

  GOD SPEAKS IN THE DARKNESS The moonlight spilled over the room’s edges through the large windows on the south side. I could see his body lying still, yet attentive, as I slipped through the bedroom door. The light outlined his small form on the pillow, and a foot peeked out from under the sheet. He was waiting again, more patiently than most eleven-year-olds, because waiting is his life. Waiting to hear the creaking of the stiff door hinges, waiting for the sound of feet coming near, waiting to hear the bedrail creak indicating presence. My slippers shuffled noiselessly along the wooden floor; at his bed, I leaned forward and felt his warm breath on my cheek. So near, yet his eyes still wide and waiting—no recognition greeted me, just the same wondering and expectant expression. I have done this a thousand times, but still, he does not know my face. His eyes could not pick his mother out in a crowd. I broke the silence with a hoarse whisper: “Son, it’s Mom. I’m here.” His head je...

Losing a child is a terrible thing. It strikes at the heart of a family, permanently reshaping it. Death because of disease or accident is heartbreaking for the parents who are left behind, grieving the loss of the child and also the loss of the future joys and hopes that the child represented—all the teaching and love and bonds that never came to full fruition. It is jarring for a parent to bury a son or daughter—against the natural order even in a cursed world. We recognize this, and so every culture has set up ceremonies and customs to grieve, support, and comfort. But there is more than one way to lose a child. Parents who have lost a child to the world face different challenges. They not only grieve the loss but also grieve unrepentant sin and ensuing damage. They have had joys and hopes crushed through willful hurt and deliberate rejection.  They have taught and loved and forged bonds, only to have it thrown back in their faces. There is no protocol for parents to use when fa...

Grief is a wilderness we all travel at multiple times in our lives. Sometimes we grieve the loss of a loved one. Other times, we grieve a broken relationship, a shattered dream, or a ministry failure. Loss takes many shapes, affects us in different ways, and often lingers longer than it seems we can stand it. The Israelites had a liturgy and structure they followed during times of grief. They wept and wailed. They tore at their clothes. They covered themselves in dust and ashes (Job 1:20; 2:12). They cried out to God in sorrow. They sang out in lament. In our culture, we’ve forgotten how to grieve. We rush through painful experiences to put them behind us. When others around us grieve, we are uncomfortable with their tears and do whatever we can to distract them. We might even altogether avoid the grief-stricken around us. But grief is not something to be distracted from, overlooked, or avoided. There’s no timetable and no way to rush through it. Grief is not something that we just ha...

We don’t realize how disorienting grief can be. In the aftermath of a dearly loved one’s death, you feel like you are living two worlds at once: one with that loved departed family member, and one without. The death of a loved one is a blade that pierces beneath the armour, an arrow that lodges down in the soul. It brings a hurt we cannot defend, a pain we cannot forget, an injury which will never fully heal. Though life goes on without noticing our loss — daily broadcasts continue, people shop at grocery stores, buses come and go — we are no longer the same. The ache will not finally leave, the groan, not silence, the limp not amend until we remove the tattered garments of this life. They are no longer with us. Though life for us has not ended, it has changed. There is no real going back. Death’s Prolonged Victims Death often inflicts its greatest havoc upon its survivors; its primary victims do not yet lie in the grave. The dead are with Christ, healed. Our bleeding goes ...

A Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. ISAIAH 53:3 We are not acquainted with grief in the way in which Our Lord was acquainted with it; we endure it, we get through it, but we do not become intimate with it.  At the beginning of life, we do not reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin. We take a rational view of life and say that a man by controlling his instincts, and by educating himself, can produce a life which will slowly evolve into the life of God.  But as we go on, we find the presence of something which we have not taken into consideration, our sin. It upsets all our calculations. Sin has made the basis of things wild and not rational. We have to recognize that sin is a fact, not a defect; sin is red-handed mutiny against God.  Either God or sin must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue. If sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is no possible ul...