Back to Work

I feel like I could very easily get sick, or get run over by a car–but I might as well get back to work. Loved ones die, your heart is broken, but life goes on until we’re gathered at the river (and if I post that hymn, I really will break down and cry again).

This our pilgrimage is desperately hard. We come through it only by God’s grace–which is all too often invisible to us.

So, yeah–shrug the harness onto my shoulder and do my best to pull the plow.

But first a hymn. Let me go find one.

This was helpful to a friend of mine who lost her dog recently, maybe it will help you and Patty.

A Liturgy for the loss of a living creature

LEADER: King of Creation, Here was your good creature.

Here was your good creature, O Lord, pondered and called to life
by your own compassionate design.
PEOPLE: Here was your good creature,
and here were the spaces and the days we shared, enjoying the glad company
and cheerful fellowship of a fellow creature.
We made room in our lives,
room in our home, room in our hearts,
to welcome your unique creation.
And we gave your good creature the name ___________.
We were filled with a right and fond affection for another living thing your hands had made, delighting daily in its presence.
Now this season of our shared lives
is ended by death.
Our hearts are unprepared for such loss, and we are deeply grieved.
Even so, Heavenly Father,
we are grateful for the life that was,
for the gift of a living thing so easily loved.
We are thankful for the many blessings of knowing this creature,
and for the lingering imprint

of such a cherished presence in our lives. We are grateful for these good memories of sweeter times:

We are grateful, O God,
for the happiness that was,
even as we mourn the sorrow that is, even as we sit in the sadness
of now empty spaces
in heart and home,
empty spaces that echo our loss.
Now we say our goodbyes.

O Lord, how long till all is made right?
How long till your wild grace restores all loss and upends every leaving?
How long till these hurts are healed
and these griefs eternally sealed and set aside by the finally completed work
of your redeeming love?
We know if no sparrow falls
beyond the ken of your compassion, that you also, in this moment,
inhabit our sadness at this wounding, your weeping at the world’s brokenness somehow deeper than our own.
Be near us, O God.
Be near each of us who must reckon with the sorrow of death
and the sting of separation,
for what we feel in this loss

is nothing less
than the groan of all creation.
Our finite minds cannot trace
the deeper mysteries of your eternal mendings, but this we know with certainty:
You are merciful and loving,
gentle and compassionate,
caring tenderly for all that you have made.
We know that the final working of your redemption will be far-reaching, encompassing all things in heaven and on earth,
so that no good thing will be lost forever,
so that even our sorrow at the loss
of this beloved creature will somehow, someday, be met and filled,
and, in joy, made forever complete.
Comfort us in this meantime, O Lord, for the ache of these days is real.
Amen.
COPYRIGHT © 2017 DOUGLAS MCKELVEY