An extract of a funeral address

What makes suicide so much more difficult to process than we could have imagined, is that none of us know what torment they were struggling with at the end.  Why they did what they did, and why we couldn’t have stopped this tragedy from happening. We will never know and it will not help us to dwell on imagined reasons. 

Yet, even now we are probably contemplating the lost opportunities, the lost moments, the times that we won’t share in the future.  For some of us, we’re also possibly feeling angry and hurt and upset. 

And a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that it was already filling.  But He was in the stern, asleep on a pillow. And they awoke Him and said to Him,
“Teacher, do You not care that we are perishing?” Mark 4

We do need to be able to feel those feelings because they’re real and true, but I chose this Bible reading because it struck me that as those disciples were shocked by the storm, and as they gripped tightly to the edge of the boat, and thought that everything was over, and that God did not care – as they saw Jesus lying at the other end asleep, they wondered if He was even concerned at all about what they were going through.   They called out to him and said ‘Do you not care that we’re perishing’

I think, in this moment, there will be some of us here, who will be silently shouting out and crying out to God saying ‘do you not even care about our pain?’  Do you not even care about us?’ Do you not even care about what we’re going through?’ Did you not care enough about them to change what happened, to stop what happened?’

As Jesus saw and heard his disciples, he stood up and he rebuked the wind and the waves and stopped the storm and said to his disciples to have faith.   It will be incredibly hard for us at this point to have faith, yet we still can.  This story in the Bible was written to remind us, and reassure us, that God does care about us; and God still cares about them.   God loves each one of you and he knows what you’re going through, and he knows the storms that this has brought on.  
He knows too the storms that they were going through.

We do not have the outcome we wanted, and this storm may not have been stilled in the way that we want it to have been, but God does declare that he makes the storm cease.  For them, their torment is over and they are at peace now with God. 

We can trust in God to have taken them to His eternal peace – to heaven, to a place where there is no more suffering, or sickness, or crying or torment, pain or tears.  This is a promise to us in the Bible.

Can we allow ourselves to trust in God to be with us over the next days and weeks and months? Can we trust God to comfort us in our sadness and in our loss

I hope that you’ll find that the answer is yes.  We can trust God to be with us. We can trust God to take care of us. We can trust God to make something good come out of this

This is not what God wanted for them, but it is what has happened. 

We can look back and think of them, in our memories and reminisces, and in our thoughts.  We can remember those good times, and so in time we can celebrate and laugh and then cry.  We can smile and remember the good that we’ve had, the memories, the companionship and fun… and all the while God will be with us – healing us –  for He is not asleep. He’s not resting, He cares. 

And so I ask you, as I ask myself, to put your trust into God to make all things right, and to one day restore us to our place in heaven that he does grant to us all, and that we can have peace away from the fears, the doubts, the hurts, and the pains of this world. 

We can trust God to be with us now as we press on in the weeks and months ahead and help us to find the peace we need.

Let us smile and remember, and let our tears bring us healing, strengthening our memories of the person we loved, who is now at peace.  Amen