loss on Floods

Almighty God, we bow before You, humbly able to admit how small, fragile, and dependent we are. Unfortunately, for many of us, it takes a disaster to convince us that we are not in control. Over the p...

When the waves rise high above our ability to see your face… Still my soul, Lord Jesus, Calm the storm in me When the howling wind and the pouring rain drown out the sound of your voice… Still my sou...

Live to the point of tears.

A ship went down in a storm, and only one man survived. He was fortunate enough to land on an uninhabited island in the South Pacific. With just a few items in his pocket, he was able to build a small...

…we talked in a kind of ocean depth of memories where magic fish swam past, as we evoked our parents and Joy’s sisters, all dead now but with us for an hour in that exquisite room where time past and ...

After the adrenalin rush of the death and funeral, bereaved people often feel deserted and overwhelmed with loneliness.

I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not see.

As we feel the pain of our own losses, our grieving hearts open our inner eye to a world in which losses are suffered far beyond our own little world of family, friends, and colleagues. It is the worl...

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It's always our self we find in the sea.

Gracious God, we are called to be a joyful people, giving thanks for You and Your good gifts. There are times, however, when sin and sorrow grow, pushing joy to the side. We lose sight of Your grace, ...

The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wi...

And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!

When John Stuart Mill—the influential philosopher and political economist—arrived at Thomas Carlyle's door that evening, his face drained of color, bearing the devastating news that the manuscript...

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

…I put down these memorandums of my affections In honor of tenderness, In honor of all of those who have been Conscripted into the brotherhood Of loss…

Lament is the practice of mourning what is wrong in the world and calling on God to repair it. We lament the sins for which we are responsible, the sins for which we are only indirectly responsible, a...

The best helps to growth in grace are the ill usage, the affronts, and the losses which befall us. We should receive them with all thankfulness, as preferable to all others, were it only on this accou...

Gracious and Merciful God—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: When we wouldn’t love—You did. When we couldn’t do right—you could. When we wouldn’t give—You gave and gave all of yourself. So we come to You w...

How shall my heart be reconciled to its feast of losses?

Weeping is perhaps the most human and universal of all relief measures.

When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.

No sorrowful tears, no beating of the breast For a safe repose has taken me. I dance Ring dances with the blessed saints In the beautiful fields of the righteous.

The mind has a dumb sense of vast loss—that is all. It will take mind and memory months and possibly years to gather the details and thus learn and know the whole extent of the loss.

When you lead people through difficult change, you take them on an emotional roller coaster because you are asking them to relinquish something—a belief, a value, a behavior—that they hold dear. Peopl...

Nothing that grieves us can be called little: by the eternal laws of proportion a child's loss of a doll and a king's loss of a crown are events of the same size.

I think these difficult times have helped me to understand better than before how infinitely rich and beautiful life is in every way and that so many things that one goes around worrying about are of ...

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

There is a haunting line in the musical Les Misérables: There’s a grief that can’t be spoken. There’s a pain goes on and on. It’s true. There is a grief that seems all-encompassing. It seems like it ...

We bring before you, O Lord, the troubles and perils of people and nations, the sighing of prisoners and captives, the sorrows of the bereaved, the necessities of strangers, the helplessness of the we...