Mourning Time
I was born in 1990, which makes me a millennial. My generation gets a lot of bad press, especially these days, but I think there’s also a lot of good that can come from us.
We’re no longer the college kids who are out there partying and living on social media; now, we’re the generation managing growing debt and obligations and escaping on social media. There are many people younger than us who are looking to us, and many people older than us are looking back at us.
Any time something happens in the government, economy, or the world, I think about what my generation is going to be left to deal with. We inherit what the previous generation leaves to us, whether we like it or not.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the state of the nation today and everything we’ve inherited. As I’ve been thinking about these things, I realized just how much my generation has lived through.
1999: Columbine shooting
2001: 9/11 terrorist attack
2008: The Great Recession
2020: COVID-19
Each of these major events has completely changed the way we live, and these are just a few of the larger nationwide events that we have experienced. There have been regional tragedies that we’re aware of, not to mention the personal pain we all have experienced that has shaped us.
My point is that each of these events in our lives, whether personal or global, can and do leave a mark on us. Sometimes events help make us wiser, but they can also make us fearful. If I’m not careful, I can look at every other human being as a threat. Similar mindset shifts happen after every traumatic or tragic event.
I wonder how many of us take the time to process through the traumas that we have experienced.
Right now, we don’t have all of the answers, and I don’t think that we’re supposed to. I do believe we can experience immense healing, freedom, breakthrough, and restoration, but I also believe this is a great opportunity for mourning.
In the Bible, the prophets would lament, and I think that would probably do us some good today.
What would it look like if we took the time to sit and mourn with the Lord? Mourn our own sinfulness, our own actions, what has been taken from us, and what we’ve lost.
What if we mourned for our neighbors, our family members, and our communities? Loss and grief have been spreading like wildfire through the earth for years — what if we took the time to feel all of those emotions and trust that God will meet us there?
“I will turn their mourning into gladness;
I will give them comfort and joy instead of sorrow.” Jeremiah 31:13b
With the global, national, regional, and personal tragedies we’ve lived through, there’s a lot to grieve. There are many big feelings for us to process through. I do believe that there’s hope and that God will use all situations for his glory and our good, but I don’t think he rushes us there. God does turn our sadness into dancing, but first, we mourn. Let’s accept God’s invitation to mourn with him today.
Do you take the time to process to grieve losses with the Lord?
What does taking the time to mourn practically look like?