A God-Sized Grief

I promise this will be short. What more can I say that hasn’t already been said about the horrors that unfolded in Israel on October 7th? All I can add to that cacophony is my own grief.

It is a God-sized grief. A grief too big to hold in human hands. It is a God-sized grief because the crimes of war are crimes against human souls made in God’s image. We are more than just our bodies. It matters how we die. It is a God-sized grief because Jewish people are the Family through whom God chose to bless the world. It is a God-sized grief because the pain has exploded out from the center of Israel, reverberating like a sonic boom, revealing the fractures of hatred that still exist in our own back yard. It is a God-sized grief because Evil longs to obscure the Truth. Propaganda casts blame on the innocent. Social media only adds fuel to the growing funeral pyre.

It is a God-sized grief because for the first time in human history, Evil live-streamed its atrocities against innocent men, women and children. And we watched.

We watched and then put our phones down and went about our normal days.

Terror held our eyes hostage, forcing us to unwittingly participate in the dehumanization of these victims. There is no other way to put it. When you watch such horror unfold on a screen that fits in the palm of your hand, you literally shrink a human soul to a matter of pixels. Your eyes participate in the crime. You dissociate. You have to. The grief is too big to take in.

It is a God-sized grief.

God-sized grief reveals a longing in all of our hearts for God-sized Justice and God-sized Consolation.

After the attacks of October 7th, I stood in front of my bookshelves, searching and searching for something to read that might bring comfort into this terrifying time. At last, I pulled an old paperback copy of The Hiding Place from off the shelf. The Hiding Place, written by Corrie ten Boom, is the story of how her family began operating a secret resistance ring in German-occupied Netherlands in the 1940s. In the middle of the war, they began hiding Jewish men, women and children in their home in Haarlem and helped hundreds to safety. For this, all but Corrie found death in concentration camps. As I read, I found myself begging God for the kind of faith and courage that Corrie and her family showed in the face of Evil.

I was struck in particular by this passage:

One day as Father and I were returning from our walk we found the Grote Markt cordoned off by a double ring of police and soldiers. A truck was parked in front of the fish mart; into the back were climbing men, women, and children, all wearing the yellow star. . . .

"Father! Those poor people!" I cried. . . .

"Those poor people," Father echoed. But to my surprise I saw that he was looking at the solders now forming into ranks to march away. "I pity the poor Germans, Corrie. They have touched the apple of God's eye.”

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Our friends, the immensely talented Brad & Jen , took this film photo of us (minus our older son) this summer while on vacation in Traverse City, Michigan. Can’t wait to go back.

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Listen— If you’re looking for some help understanding what is happening in Israel, I highly recommend a recent episode of the podcast Honestly by Bari Weiss, called: The New Axis of Evil: Condoleezza Rice on War in Israel and a Changed World.

Watch — I will be joining the rest of Tennessee and watching Nate Bargatze host SNL this Saturday night. The Foo Fighters are also performing, so that doesn't hurt.

Also Watch — The Hiding Place (PRIME VIDEO) — I had a chance to see A.S. Peterson’s theater adaptation of The Hiding Place in Nashville last year. That play was filmed for a movie version that is now available for viewing on Prime Video. It is a beautiful telling of the story and I highly recommend it to you.