Remembering Karl Kutz (1962 - 2025)

I was in the first class Dr. Karl Kutz taught at Multnomah University in the fall of 1996. My best friend, Jill, and I sat near the front in the middle of the long row of chairs bolted to the floor with built-in desks in L101. The class was “History and Poetry,” where we studied the Old Testament books of Joshua through Song of Songs. It was a lot of ground to cover, and Dr. Kutz was fresh from his PhD program at the University of Madison, Wisconsin. He gave us copious notes on every book in this section of the Bible, always with charts. We were his guinea pigs. He was finding out in real time what undergraduates could handle and what he could expect of us. At the same time, we were finding out what we were capable of learning.

My most vivid memory—and even this is fuzzy 29 years later—was the day he taught about the Song of Songs. I can’t recall which approach he took to the book—whether he read it as an allegory for God’s love for Israel or as a human love poem. What I remember is that Jill and I raised our hands and asked lots of questions of whichever view he took, skeptical of whatever he had just taught. We had a good rapport by that point; our questions meant no disrespect. We were engaging in the kind of sparring that he welcomed in the classroom. What happened next I will never forget. Dr. Kutz tipped his head to one side and said, “Well, I’ll have to think more about this.” We moved on to the next topic. The next day in class, Dr. Kutz handed out new notes on the Song of Songs. He had spent his evening rethinking his view and changed his mind completely. His new handouts reflected what he now believed to be a better way of reading the book.

I was stunned. I grew up in a family where, when challenged, we doubled down to better prove our point. Karl modeled humility, curiosity, and teachability. He was not threatened by our questions. In fact, he was grateful for the way they made him think.

Karl was so devoted to teaching well that he was constantly revising the charts and timelines he made from scratch. These became overheads, thin plastic sheets paired with laser printed paper and fed through a machine that burned the ink into the plastic so it could be projected on a screen hung at the front of the classroom. Never one to waste, in years to come, Karl would give me the overheads he had updated for his own lectures. Eventually more than a foot of space on my bookshelf was devoted to 3-ring binders with his class notes and cast-off overheads. I’ve kept them all.

Karl invited me to be his TA. For several years I graded tests, created handouts, edited documents, and recorded grades in spreadsheets. Once he asked me to read through Chronicles alongside Samuel and Kings, highlighting any differences between them. Another time he gave me the entire semester’s worth of Greek reading for fourth year Greek (a class I had not taken). My assignment was to underline all the words I didn’t know so that he could create a glossary of unfamiliar words. Since I had taken 3 years of Greek, I was in exactly the position the average student would be entering that class. It was a sensible plan, since Karl had difficulty remembering that not everyone knew as much as he did. He regularly assumed that others contained mental dictionaries in multiple languages and that we had retained everything we ever read or heard in class, the way he did.

One day Karl and I talked about the possibility of me going on for more schooling. His advice was clear and direct. “Carmen, you should not pay for a PhD. By the time you get to that level, someone should be paying you to go to school.” That seemed terribly unrealistic. I thought he had again forgotten that we were not all as brilliant as he was. But he was right. He understood the academic world better than I did at that point. And eventually, someone was paying for my PhD and offering me a stipend besides.

Karl arrived at Multnomah having mastered Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Akkadian, Ugaritic, German, and French. I remember when Karl began teaching himself Chinese so he could read a manuscript related to martial arts. When I was a student he taught fencing as a PE class. Karl’s curiosity to learn new languages and skills was unquenchable.

As brilliant as he was, Karl was patient, others-centered, an encourager. And oh, how I’ll miss his infectious laugh! He and Laurie traveled all the way from Oregon to Colorado for our wedding at their own expense. He prepared a toast for the reception in true Karl fashion. Never one to work off the cuff, Karl had categorized all the “I” words in the English dictionary according to their part of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc.). Then he composed his toast using almost entirely words that began with “I” for Imes. That’s just how he rolled. 

One day a couple of years later we sat at his computer—I had pulled up an extra chair beside him—while we scoured a website of Hebrew baby girl names. I had graduated by then, and was pregnant and auditing his Hebrew class with my free alumnus audit. He found the name Eliana, which we both loved. My husband and I had lost our first child to miscarriage, and it devastated us. Karl sat with me in that sacred space of emerging hope that our second child would be born healthy. The name Eliana means “My God has answered”—such a meaningful name for the child who was an answer to our anguished prayers.

Eliana was born during spring break. I spent the rest of the semester recovering and adjusting to motherhood, so I wasn’t there on the day classes resumed after spring break. Students filed into the classroom nervous to find out how much Hebrew they still knew after a week away. Karl put a Hebrew passage on the overhead for them to translate together. They struggled through the unfamiliar words and expressions—“after only one-and-a-half hours in pain of childbirth in the house of the sick . . .”—until they gradually figured it out. [Note: I labored much longer than this—about 22 hours—but Eliana was born just 90 minutes after we arrived at the hospital.] Recognizing that all the students would want to hear the news, Karl had composed a birth announcement for Eliana entirely in Hebrew. A few years later, Eliana sat astride the rocking horse in his living room while we visited—a horse he carved himself as a gift to his wife.

I was among the small group of students who sat around the lunch table with the two of them at the Old Spaghetti Factory to celebrate Karl’s 40^th birthday. Our birthdays were just one day (and 14 years) apart. He wasn’t quite old enough to be my father, but he was like a much older brother or fun uncle.

Karl was honest about his struggles. His wife’s health challenges absorbed much of their married years and made it impossible to think of having children. I remember those years as a dark cloud hovered over their home while they tried one unsuccessful treatment after another. Karl loved children, and it broke his heart not to be a father. He channeled his energies into his niece and nephew—his pride and joy—and into his students, counting us as part of his family. At his memorial service, his colleague Becky Josberger read a message he wrote to all his former students, telling us that we were like the children he never had.

Karl and his wife supported us monthly when we became missionaries. Later, when I entered fully into academic life we enjoyed catching up at conferences. I remember one such occasion when we sat on the floor in the conference center for a long talk. It was 2012. I think he had divorced by then. I remember him sharing openly with me about his wrestling with God. I don’t remember Karl teaching me in class about lament, but he lived it in a way that taught all who knew him. He was intellectually honest, which meant he had nothing to hide from his students.

Some seven years or more after I had graduated from Multnomah, I was reading a book in seminary whose approach to Genesis 1 was revolutionary. I wrote to Karl asking if he’d ever read the book or heard of this approach. I needed it to pass the Karl test before I embraced it. I knew he would not be threatened by a new idea. His response to my email was straightforward: “Yes, that’s how I’ve pretty much always read Genesis 1.” My jaw dropped. How had I studied and worked with him so closely for at least four years and not known this? How had we never talked about it before? The reason was simple. He arrived at Multnomah during my Sophomore year, after I had already taken Pentateuch.

Later he gave me a full set of his notes on the Pentateuch, just in case they would be useful to me. Now that he’s gone, I’m grateful that I’ve kept them all these years.

I was sitting at my desk at Biola University the day I got Karl’s email with his diagnosis and bleak prospects. I let out a cry of dismay and the tears started flowing. My husband responded to my plea instantly, coming across campus to my office to hold me and let me cry. Although Karl and I have rarely had the chance to see one another these past 10 years, just knowing he’s there for me has been enough. He believed in me, trained me, hired me as his TA, supported us financially, and cheered me on every step of the way. Karl never doubted that I would get a PhD and follow in his footsteps. When we saw each other at conferences he told me how proud he was of me. But after that initial email about Karl’s diagnosis, I never saw him again.

During the last year of Karl’s life, he stewarded all the energy he had left between chemo and radiation treatments for writing. In the week before he entered hospice care, he completed his commentary on Isaiah. At his memorial service, Becky shared the story of how on the day Karl announced he would no longer be able to send or respond to emails, his publisher had an emergency meeting. They offered him four contracts for books he had already written, which he signed on his deathbed.

The world of publishing has changed considerably in the almost 30 years since Karl started teaching. An author must not only be smart and able to communicate well, but they must have a public platform with a built-in audience. Not only was Karl nearly silent on social media, but now he’s no longer living. The fact that a publisher was not only willing to offer him one contract, but FOUR is a testament to the impeccable quality of his work and of his character. Karl wrote by teaching on paper, creating clear and helpful synopses of what he saw in the biblical text. He poured out his life for the sake of those around him, giving generously whatever he had. I’m so grateful that we’ll be able to continue learning from Karl in the years to come.

For most of his academic career, Karl studied the book of Job. He also lived it. His years of lament gave him strength of character and depth of empathy as well as a keen sense of his own need. Becky shared that in his last year on earth Karl finally felt like he was experiencing the end of Job’s story—seeing fruit where he had long waited empty handed.

Karl has been part of most of the major milestones of my adult life—our dating and engagement, our wedding, our miscarriage, the birth of our oldest daughter, our work as missionaries in the Philippines, my PhD journey, when I began teaching as adjunct faculty at Multnomah and we were finally colleagues, my move into a full-time position in Canada, the publication of my books. I received tenure just a couple of weeks before he died. In the week he died, Multnomah closed its doors forever.

The death of my alma mater will now perpetually be linked with the death of one of my dearest mentors. The tragedy of Multnomah’s closing means that I’ll never have to see what would become of Multnomah without Karl. His absence there is unimaginable to me.

How I would love to be a fly on the wall as Karl asks the Lord all his questions. I picture them walking through gardens, talking and laughing, and stopping to investigate each new discovery. By the time you and I arrive, Karl will have a 3-ring binder waiting with timelines and charts of all the things about heaven that he thinks would be helpful for newcomers to know. He’ll start with an apology for the things he got wrong in his class notes and then excitedly show us how things really are.

That’s just Karl. He was, and is, a gift to the world!

The December Reckoning

I can't shake the melancholy this December. Life has cast its shadow over all the parties. It's not all somber, of course, but the moments of delight are framed by life as it really is--budget constraints, colleagues losing their jobs, family tension and even estrangement, the stress of year-end deadlines. Underneath it all are layers of memories because December has a way of piling on.

On December 10th, 1999, Daniel and I went to a routine ultrasound, excited to see our baby for the first time. We had told every living soul of our joy that we were expecting. What we weren't expecting was the absence of a heartbeat. The stillness in my womb chilled us that Christmas. The songs seemed hollow, offensive even. We grieved deeply.

Every December I think of that baby, our baby, no longer living.

On December 10th, 2002, Daniel and I arrived with our toddler in the Philippines. We had sold most of our worldly goods and said our goodbyes, intending to settle indefinitely among an ethnic group that needed to hear the good news about Jesus. We experienced Christmas as outsiders that year, observers to traditions and families and friendships not yet our own. It was a bleak month, that stretched us to capacity. Things didn't go as planned. We only stayed 28 months, far short of the decades we expected. We left without accomplishing what we intended to do. God seemed so silent.

Every December I think of the pain of leaving and starting over and leaving again.

On December 10th, 2019, InterVarsity Press released my book. Bearing God's Name is four years old now. It's been a joy to see these ideas catch people's imaginations around the world. My parents met us in Portland to celebrate. We didn't know it then, but it was our last Christmas together. The pandemic that ravaged the world and ruined Christmas in 2020 also managed to ruin Christmas in 2021. By 2022, the damage had been done; my parents were divorced.

And so I sit here this December, trying to embrace the season, but finding it complicated. December will never be what it was. The ornaments on our tree that recall happier seasons are tinged with the color of grief. It's not that I mind the tree or the lights, the concerts and the cookies. I welcome them all with open arms, as long as they don't force me to be glib. Life is far richer and more rewarding than I anticipated, but also far more painful.

December is the month that beckons us to take stock of our year, of our life. It's the reckoning of what we've done and who we've loved. We find out who our friends and family are and what we've lost along the way. Decorations mark time, evoking both nostalgia and change.

I don't know what this month holds for each of you, but I expect it's complicated.

A certain chair may be empty this year.

A certain song will bring you to tears.

A certain smell tugs your heart down memory lane.

This year I'm taking comfort in the gritty realities of Advent. Christ's birth followed a long season of agonized waiting in which life did not go as planned. As we await his return, is it any wonder that we bear both joy and sorrow, delight and pain? The hope that undergirds us is the same hope that carried the Israelites through their years of exile and sustained them under oppressive Roman rule. 

Christmas is not the story of an upwardly mobile businessman who crushed his sales targets and earned the Employee-of-the-Year Award. It's not the story of a rich girl who got everything on her Amazon wish list. It's not even the family in matching outfits with every hair in place for the annual photo.

Christmas is about a poor family on the margins under heavy taxation forced to travel at an inconvenient time. It's about the unlikely visitors who showed up to celebrate their son's birth and about their flight to Egypt in fear of their lives. If my community feels overshadowed or fraught with contradictions, we're well positioned to appreciate Christmas. It's not, and never was, picture perfect. 

December is a season to ponder the surprising work of God through an improbable cast of characters. It's a reckoning of sorts, a taking stock of what's what, a waiting for what comes next, and a gladness that none of it depends on me.

Lament's Crucial Role in the Ministry of the Church

In my last post, I discussed three misconceptions about lament. Now I'd like to highlight four reasons why lament is essential to the ministry of the church. I'll be drawing on the excellent work of a Ugandan author, Emmanuel Katongole, catholic priest and professor at Notre Dame. His book, Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa, is one of the best on this topic.

Did you know that laments outnumber any other type of psalm in the Bible? This may come as a surprise because most of us rarely hear lament psalms in church. The truth is, they make up 40% of the book of Psalms! (See Katongole, 104)

Not only that. By my count almost 25% of the psalms include "imprecatory" language, which is when the psalmist prays for God to bring harm on his enemies. For reasons I'll share below, I believe that these psalms are for Christians, too. Why can we not get along well without lament? Here are four reasons:

1. God's character is the basis of lament.

As Emmanuel Katongole reminds us, 

"At the heart of Israel's social, political, and religious life is the central conviction and experience of Yahweh as a saving God. Yahweh is not only the creator of the world and sovereign ruler of nations; Israel is God's chosen nation, which, through a covenant relationship, enjoys God's special favor and protection. For biblical Israel, therefore, safety and security are found not in military strength or wealth or technological advantage, but in the covenant relationship with Yahweh. Thus in the moment of crisis, because they believed that God can, should--and indeed, would--do something to save them, they complained, mourned, wept, chanted dirges, and cursed." (Born from Lament, 103-104)

This point is especially true of imprecatory psalms (the ugly, violent-sounding ones). If we cut out the violent parts of the psalms, we deny part of God’s essential character. YHWH’s self-description in Exodus 34:6-7 highlights divine mercy, but it also says of God: “forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty, but visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation” (NRSV). The God of the Old Testament is YHWH, the covenant-making and redeeming God who rescues and saves, who demonstrates love and who takes sin seriously.

Would we prefer it otherwise? Would we prefer a world where rampant evil goes unchecked? Where corrupt despots get rich by oppressing others? Would we prefer for people to be allowed to destroy each other’s lives and reputations by spreading false rumors about them with impunity? Or are we grateful that God wields his power in loving ways by putting a stop to injustice? 

If we believe that God takes sin seriously, then we can accept the Bible's invitation to pray that he will act to bring the unrepentant to justice. 

2. Jesus modeled lament.

The book of Hebrews tells us that even Jesus lamented. "During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with fervent cries and tears to the one who could save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission." (Hebrews 5:7)

Jesus' tearful prayers did not disqualify him. He was still "without sin." And here the author of Hebrews says that his lament was evidence of "reverent submission." Remember that on the cross Jesus prayed Psalm 22:1: "My God! My God! Why have you forsaken me?" This, too, was a faithful way to pray in the midst of his darkest hour. If Jesus is our model, then lament is an indispensable part of faithful discipleship.

3. Without lament, our worship spaces are less safe.

We live in a world full of brokenness at every level ranging from international to intensely personal. The people walking through our doors (or tuning in) on a Sunday morning are the same people who are enduring hardship throughout their week. If our church services are mostly a pep rally or an exhortation to "trust more," and fail to reckon honestly with brokenness, we essentially send people elsewhere to find solutions to their problems. Introducing lament in corporate worship creates space to be real -- to bring our pain to God and cry out for healing.

When we don't acknowledge pain in church, we get less of God and less of each other. As my friend Amy Oden recently put it, "I find more of God when I am most angry with him." Expressing our true emotions in his presence opens us up to meet him in deeper ways. It also opens us to each other.

Why would we deny this opportunity to our congregations? I can think of one reason why: FEAR. We fear that if we create space for lament, people will be offended or discouraged. But in reality, the opposite happens. By restricting our prayers to praise, we deny people access to the full message of Scripture. We lose people who think that their lives and emotions are too complex for the church. If your congregation is likely to be offended by lament, then they have not embraced the whole counsel of Scripture. Teach them what the Bible says about it. Cultivate a space where people can pray how they feel and in so doing discover that they are not alone.

4. Lament is the foundation of social justice.

The consequences of neglecting lament go beyond our local congregation. Not only will individuals not feel that the church is a safe place to bring their whole selves, but the church will lose its ability to impact the wider culture by addressing societal brokenness. 

Katongole explains, "In the end, the loss of lament signals of loss of passion for social justice. A church that has lost its nerve to lament before God will likely lack the nerve to confront oppression and be prone to support the status quo. But that is also the reason why an attempt to recover the language of lament is about solidarity with those who suffer" (183).

The historic failure of white evangelicals to lament racial injustice unveils the root of our problem--we see racial discrimination as something happening to somebody else and being done by somebody else. By identifying with neither the perpetrators nor the victims, we maintain distance. As long as we are distant we cannot be part of the solution. Unless we see crimes against people of color as crimes against our fellow humans, we excuse ourselves from taking action.  

If we cannot corporately bring to God those problems that overwhelm us, where will we bring them? If we are not comfortable creating space for our brothers and sisters to pray and weep, how can we even begin to work with them to find solutions? If their grief does not become our own, on what basis will we build unity? Where else will we find the resources to address whatever threatens to undo us? The first step in imagining a different kind of future is to grieve together and to grieve deeply over what has been done and what is being done.

If we want to (1) know God, (2) follow Christ, (3) minister to broken people, and (4) make a difference in a broken world, then lament is essential. On its own, lament is not enough. It is not the whole answer. But without it, we lose our grip on the resilient hope of the gospel.

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For more on lament, see my interview with Remnant Radio. 

For more on imprecatory prayer, see my blog post for the Political Theology Network.

Three Misconceptions about Lament

Things are bad in this world of ours. An awful lot of hard stuff is going on. If there was ever a time to cry, this is it. But many Christians shy away from lament because they believe lament is somehow sub-Christian or perhaps they think it won't do any good. 

I've identified three reasons Christians avoid lament. All three are misconceptions. We'll tackle them one at a time:

(1) Lament shows a lack of faith.

If we really believe that God is good and powerful and that he will win in the end, then we would not need to lament, right? Singer-songwriter Michael Card disagrees. In his book A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament, Card says this: 

"Lament is the deepest, most costly demonstration of belief in God. Despair is the ultimate manifestation of the total denial that He exists." (55)

In other words, if you did not believe in the existence of God, there would be no reason to lament. It would do no good. It's because we do believe in God, and trust him as the only one who is able to make things right that we present our most desperate requests to him.

In fact, the Bible offers many examples of faithful men and women who bring prayers of lament to God. Those prayers made it into our Bibles without condemnation. Some of them were included in the book of Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible. Their presence in Scripture implies that we are invited to pray laments, too.

Michael Card explains it this way: 

"People like Job, David, Jeremiah, and even Jesus reveal to us that prayers of complaint can still be prayers of faith. They represent the last refusal to let go of the God who may seem to be absent or worse -- uncaring. If this is true, then lament expresses one of the more intimate moments of faith -- not a denial of it. It is supreme honesty before a God whom my faith tells me I can trust. He encourages me to bring everything as an act of worship, my disappointment, frustration, and even my hate. Only lament uncovers this kind of new faith, a biblical faith that better understands God's heart as it is revealed through Jesus Christ." (31)

Lament is not faith-less, it's faith-full.

 

(2) Lament is the opposite of gratitude. 

How can we lament when the Bible urges us to "give thanks in all circumstances" (1 Thessalonians 5:18)? Doesn't thankfulness preclude lament? One might think so, but again Scripture shows us that lament and gratitude go hand in hand.

In Psalm 44, the sons of Korah remember with gratitude the way that God has acted on Israel's behalf in the past (vv. 1-8). It's against the backdrop of their gratitude that they can plead with God to rescue them again (vv. 9-25). The character of God expressed in history leads them to trust God's future deliverance:

"Rise up and help us; rescue us because of your unfailing love." (Psalm 44:26)

We need not fear that lament will shut out our gratitude. For reasons I'll explain further below, lament and gratitude actually depend on one another.

(3) Lament will lead to despair. 

Some of us don't want to lament for fear of becoming bitter old souls. We don't want to get stuck. But on the contrary, it is our refusal to lament that leads to bitterness and despair. When we try to carry the grief on our own or manage our own solutions to life's deepest problems, the pressure is too much to bear.

Emmanuel Katongole explains, 

"Pain . . . has the ability to destroy language, to reduce the victim to silence. This silence is a form of powerlessness, a paralyzing form of despair. Therefore, the ability to voice grief, to find words to speak the unspeakable and to name pain, is a form of resistance to the paralyzing silence." (Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa, 56)

The pathway to joy requires us to pass through the gateway of lament -- acknowledging that all is not well in the world and that we believe our God is able to do something about it. Until we look our pain and loss directly in the face, we will be unable to let it go. 

Have you seen the Pixar movie "Inside Out"? When it seems like everything has fallen apart, Joy learns an important lesson: the value of Sadness. You can watch a clip here. Joy tries valiantly to cheer up Bing Bong by distracting him, but Sadness holds the key: by acknowledging the pain of Bing Bong's loss and making space to grieve, he is able to move forward and soon they are (literally) back on track.

So let's imagine that I've convinced you that lament is not sub-Christian. You might be wondering what to do next. What if you are just not the "emotional" type? How can you tell if you need to lament? How do you start?

One way to tell that we have unexpressed grief is when we lose our capacity to feel deep joy. I like to think of the spectrum of emotions that we experience as a window. On the left side of the window are emotions that we tend to characterize as negative -- anger, grief, fear --  while on the right-hand side are the emotions we see as positive -- joy, gratitude, delight. 

Photo credit: Rob Wingate on Unsplash

Hanging inside our emotional window is a set of old-fashioned drapes. Perhaps you remember the kind. To close the drapes, you pull a looped cord on one side of the window and both drapes gradually close until they meet in the middle. Our emotional life is like this. We cannot block just one side of the window. Closing the left side means closing the right side as well. If we suppress our feelings of grief or anger, we make it impossible to feel gratitude and joy.

I am not a trained counselor, but it's been my experience that if I find it hard to laugh along with others or enjoy a happy gathering, there is likely some unexpressed grief lodged in my soul. We can never recover our joy by imagining away our sorrow. We have to face it. Name it. Pray it. And thereby release it to God. Then we can pull our drapes open and let light back in the room.

That's why I'm so thankful for the book of Psalms. It tutors us in prayer, giving us words when we have none, and modeling the full range of ways to connect with God. If we categorize the psalms into  lament, praise, and other psalms, we find that there are more laments than any other type of psalm. That should tell us something about the life of prayer, and it should give us courage to bring our sorrows to God. 

If you have been feeling numb, you can start by making a list of things that are bothering you. It may be news headlines or it may be personal. Then bring your list to God. Find a psalm that expresses your heart -- maybe Psalm 4 or Psalm 88. Pray those words and add your own. God wants to hear your heart.

good grief

What's so good about grief?

Last Sunday we heard a sermon by Marshall Shelley (VP of Christianity Today) about what it means to be FULLY ALIVE, to have the kind of life that Jesus was talking about in John 10:10, an abundant life. He listed 5 things that characterize someone who is truly alive: praise, lament, confession, forgiveness, repentance. I found his list thought provoking. Why didn't success make his list? Or even service? How many of us would assume that happiness is the key to feeling alive? Don't confession and repentance feel like death? When we face our own ugly sin, isn't it depressing? Lament especially struck a chord with me.

According to Marshall, lament is key. He defined it as being "aware of and disturbed by what's wrong in this world." In order to be fully alive, we need to have a grip on reality. We praise God for the ways we see him working in the world, and we grieve that which is just not right.

I spent a couple of hours last night excavating my inbox. The pile of emails had grown to over 600, and I was tempted to just delete them all and start fresh. I am so, so glad I didn't. Buried in the pile were two priceless treasures -- Christmas letters from two courageous women who spent Christmas alone this year. Both lost their husbands to cancer within the past 5 years. Life has forced them down roads they didn't want to take. Awkward questions have stared them in the face. Who are you now? What will you do with your life? What these two Christmas letters had in common was honesty. They offered a window into a soul that has tasted the bitterness of grief. That window is a gift. Those of us on the outside need to know, want to know, where the journey has taken our friends. We want to know because we love them, and also because grief is a road we will all walk someday if we haven't already. Walking it is part of life -- true, abundant life.

Grief over untimely death is one kind of lament. Another kind of lament weeps over life that is less than what God intends. Injustice, bondage, rebellion, chronic pain, unforgiveness, exploitation, spiritual apathy. Are you grieved by a world where this is reality? Grief puts us in touch with what really matters, and with the state of our own soul.

Ezekiel records an obscure vision about a man who is told, "Go throughout the city of Jerusalem and put a mark on the foreheads of those who grieve and lament over all the detestable things that are done in it." (Eze 9:4 NIV) God is looking for people who are disturbed by what is not right. Jerusalem, like our world today, was filled with bloodshed and injustice. Some people saw this and were grieved over the sins of their nation. Others complained that God wasn't doing anything about it because he didn't care. They refused to see their own guilt.

Are we marked by grief? Are we alive enough to lament what is wrong in the world? Abundant life does not deny the pain, but enters into it fully, clinging to the goodness of God we cannot always see. I, for one, am thankful for friends who take me with them into their lament, so I can really live.