How Long Will You Mourn?

“Samuel never went to meet with Saul again, but he mourned constantly for him. And the Lord was sorry he had ever made Saul king of Israel.  Now the Lord said to Samuel, “You have mourned long enough for Saul. I have rejected him as king of Israel, so fill your flask with olive oil and go…”   1 Samuel 15:35 – 2 Samuel 16:1

 

Father’s Day is this coming Sunday.  I’m not particularly looking forward to it because I can never seem to find a card for my father that doesn’t say something that isn’t true.  I don’t have fond memories of times shared together.  I don’t really have any life lessons I learned from him.  I don’t miss special times with him because there were none.

Mostly, there is brokenness there.  And there is grief.

I grieve because I have never discussed the things of God with my dad.  We have never sat down over coffee and discussed Scripture and how it applies to us and what God might be saying to us.  I grieve because of the brokenness doesn’t allow us to enjoy the fullness of the father-son relationship.  I grieve because he has never blessed me, and probably never will.  I grieve because choices that we each have made have prevented God’s grace and restoration from entering our relationship. For me, that is a deep loss…something with which I am all-too-familiar.

Samuel was heartbroken over the choices Saul had made.  Those choices prevented God from moving in Saul’s life and bringing him to the place God had for him.  Samuel was witnessing the death of the dreams he had for his young pupil, Saul, and there wasn’t a thing in the world Samuel or the Lord could do about it.  Saul made choices, and those choices limited God’s hand in his life.

Yet Samuel was grief-ridden to the extent that he started shutting down.  The loss was so significant that the Lord regretted that He even made Saul king in the first place.  Sometimes we can be so consumed with grief over a loss that it becomes our identity.  We become so wrapped up in our grief and sorrow that it’s all we can see.  It could be a major disappointment.  It could be the death of a loved one.  It could be a prodigal child who has yet to return to the Father.  It could be the loss of a job or a home.  It could be the loss of relationship with a father who suffered injustice at the hands of his own father, and who himself might be mourning the same loss I am.

So how long will I grieve over this loss?  How long will I grieve over something that may or may not ever happen?  How long will I endure circling the mountain one more time before I am obedient to the direction of my Heavenly Father?

“You have mourned long enough…so fill your flask with olive oil and go…”

The Israelites circled the mountain for forty years in their disobedience to God.  They could have made the trip in eleven days (Deuteronomy 1:2) but they CHOSE their own way.  They made a choice to do it their own way and it cost most of them the chance to ever enter into their Promised Land.

God is saying to you and to me now that “You have mourned long enough over something that may or may not happen.  Fill your flask with the oil of My presence and My Holy Spirit and GO into the land into which I will lead you.”

No, we may not be reconciled with our loved one.  No, we may not have the job or the home we need right now.  No, we may never see our loved one again until we see our Father face-to-face.  We cannot change those things.  We cannot change what has happened.  God isn’t in any of that because God doesn’t dwell in the past, does He?

The only way we can hope to experience the fullness of God in our lives is to move forward in Him.  The image of oil in Scripture has always been symbolic of the Holy Spirit and of newness. We will never experience newness if we dwell on the sorrow and grief of what might have been.  If we continue to grieve over what has been lost, if we continue to hold it, we can never be able to receive the newness of life that God intends for us to have.

You have mourned long enough.  Fill your flask with the oil of My presence and My Holy Spirit and GO into the land into which I will lead you.

Go.  Go…and be faithful, my friend.