experiencing suffering and meeting Christ
It is easily argued that Lament for a Son is the most honest written account of grief available. Wolterstorff was encouraged to publish a journal that he never intended to share publicly, and the result has been spiritual and emotional healing for many. His writing shows basic structure while blatantly discarding the burdens of formality. Instead, through his writing, we are shown a permission to be honest and bare before God. Some entries are simply a poem by another author—because that’s all he could manage. Other entries are a stream of questions steeped in agonizing pain; and he did not assume the arrogant position of attempting to answer these questions as one who knows. Still, as a Biblical scholar struggling with the loss of his son trying to find an understanding through his grief of the God he serves, other entries poured into the heart of the Father.
“God is love. That is why he suffers. To love our suffering sinful world is to suffer.”
With questions and tears, Wolterstorff came face to face with a God who chooses intimate solidarity to the point of suffering with us. He wrote, “instead of explaining our suffering God shares it.” By joining our pain, God reveals the depth of His love; and, Wolterstorff discovered, as if for the first time, the significance that Christ kept his scars; the wounds of Christ never healed even after being resurrected into glory; the wounds of Christ become a vital aspect of His identity perhaps because they are the physical markers of the eternally vast expanse of His love.
For many of us, our times of trials, suffering, and pain are times in which we struggle to hear and grasp the love of God. But, this is where we find Him. In the mire. In the pain. Because we serve a God who loves to the point of suffering. Lament for a Son is a timeless must read for anyone experiencing the grief of deep loss as well as those seeking an understanding of the love of God.
“We strain to hear. But instead of hearing an answer we catch sight of the God himself scraped and torn. Through our tears we see the tears of God.”
Wolterstorff, Nicholas. Lament for a Son. Grand Rapids, MN: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1987.
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