June 2018 New Horizons

Weeping Tarries for the Night

by Jean Y. Gaffin

“Are we there yet?” We might hear this question from little ones in the backseat after only ten minutes on the road. They are too preoccupied with getting there to endure the ride, so we haul out a bag of time passers, or start the alphabet game, or, these days, hand over a smartphone! You and I, on our journey through life, have the opposite problem. We are often so absorbed with the trip itself and find our journey so satisfying, we can’t take the time to think about our destination. Unlike earlier generations for whom disease and war were part of an everyday reality, we are in many ways protected by the medical advancements and health advantages we have today. In the early twentieth century, the average life span in the United States was forty-seven. Today, it is in the high seventies. And so we, preoccupied with our comforts, pursuit of pleasure, and the here and now, don’t often ask the question, are we there yet? With few comforts and days full of long, hard work, the African-American ... Read more

Joy Comes in the Morning

by Jean Y. Gaffin

What do we learn from our grief? How is God training us in it? Through grief, God trains us both to be more like Christ and to become more heavenly minded. He takes our pain and uses it to train us in holiness, toward being conformed to Christ’s image We learn from Christ, the one who suffered for us, as Romans 8:28–29 teaches us. Hebrews 12:10–11 reminds us of our goal: to share God’s holiness. As we conform more to Christ, we become more aware of our destination and begin to look forward to it, not only because we will see our loved ones again, but also and more importantly because we will see our Savior. Once at a Bible conference, I heard a mother-daughter duo sing, “We shall behold him, / We shall behold him, / Face to face in all of his glory.” Their lovely voices, matched with this heavenly concept, sent chills down my spine. Through grief, God is preparing us for heaven and helping us to let go of this world. Sharon Betters, author of Treasures of Encouragement , lost her ... Read more

Love Transforms Grief

by Leo A. Frailey

On July 10, 1509, a baby boy was born in Noyon, France. His name was John Calvin. On that same date 499 years later, a lovely twenty-eight-year-old woman breathed her last—her lungs and brain wracked with cancer. Her name was Jessica. She was my daughter. The Lord gave the church a great gift in John Calvin, a masterful biblical exegete and one who systematized the Christian faith. Yet, the Lord took from us a great gift in our youngest child. “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). In 2009, while the church commemorated the five-hundredth birthday of Calvin, I mourned the loss of my daughter. Is Grieving Christian? In the midst of my grief, I wondered this: if “in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28 NIV), then why should I grieve? Was it OK for me to grieve and feel sadness knowing I would never see my daughter’s face again in this life? How was I to adjust my Christian perspective to living without ... Read more