Cry of the Soul by Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III

Author:Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III [Allender, Dan B. & Longman III, Tremper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: RELIGION / Christian Life / Personal Growth
Publisher: The Navigators
Published: 1999-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

OUR RESPONSE TO ABANDONMENT AND LOSS

Most of life is colored by loss. Some we can overcome with relative ease—the small pinpricks, paper cuts, bumps, and bruises that sting for a while and then go away. Others, such as dead dreams, lost loves, and broken promises, become lesions that no plastic surgery can camouflage. Loss through death or divorce, separation or betrayal, or any other form of abandonment strips the heart of any sense of constancy, security, and meaning.

A good friend recounted, in vivid terms, the moment he felt the wound of abandonment and loss. While he was cleaning the garage, listening to music, the phone rang. Annoyed, he went in to answer it.

“Hello,” he said, hoping it would be a quick call.

“This is the suburban police. Are you the parent of Samantha Richards?”

Fear shuddered through his mind. “Yes, officer, what’s wrong?”

“I’m afraid Samantha’s been caught shoplifting with some friends. You must come to the station for questioning and to pick her up.”

My friend tripped all over himself in a panic, changing clothes, finding keys—all the time questions coursing through his mind. She’s never been in trouble before. She’s a normal kid—active in church and school, plenty of friends. There must be some mistake. What’s going to happen to her?

He hurried to the police station only to sit and wait in the lobby for an hour as the other parents were being questioned. Sadness gave way to depression. When he was finally called into the detective’s office, the officer’s opening words numbed his mind: “It was your daughter who actually stole the merchandise.”

With Samantha released into her father’s custody, they headed home. Both were devastated as they faced the next step: juvenile court. His depression began heading down into despair. What would happen in court? What would happen to his daughter?

As he drove in silence, he recalled the day of her birth. It had been a difficult birth, and the physicians had cautioned that she might not live. He had held her in his arms, gazing at her bright, wide-open stare. Then his thoughts flashed ahead to the engaging, precocious conversations they’d had when she was three. His mind continued to race through all the dreams he held for her, and he felt as if his life was crumbling along with hers.

She had betrayed him. She had abandoned her heritage and values and turned her back on his dreams for a stupid choice. One phone call, and he was plunged into feeling more hollow and alone than at any other moment in his life.

Though we may not be plunged into the despondency of despair, we all experience the loss of relationship and the subsequent loss of hope. Some may attempt to cover up their feelings by muttering pious platitudes—“Praise the Lord anyway”—or by shooing sadness away through immersion in the hectic busyness of life. But every once in a while, life catches us and brings us face to face with reality, and we feel what appears to be an inconsolable sadness.

For some, such feelings seem out of place in the Christian life—at least on the surface.

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