Last week I experienced a seemingly trivial disappointment. But it was something I’d prayed for for decades, and we specifically felt God leading us to pursue this final opportunity. When the answer was “no”, it was really “never”.
Devastated.
In everything we’ve been through over the last year, I never cried myself to sleep. Last week I did. Twice.
The whole time I kept asking God to say something. Anything. His answer was unlike anything I’ve ever heard, and it’s important for you to hear.
First, let me set the stage:
It’s approximately 600 BC. You’re standing at the Northern gate of the Temple in Jerusalem. You see women weeping over the death of the Phoenician god Tammuz. They’re worshiping a false god in the courts of the one true God.
Fast forward. I cry out for God’s truth about my sorrow, and He says,
“You’re weeping for Tammuz. Stop it.”
I don’t know about you, but I think of idolatry as exotic and distant from my life. Or as anything I put above obedience to God, aka disobedience.
But we prayed about this opportunity. God prompted us to pursue it. Why would He subject me to heartbreak and accuse me of idol worship when I was obeying?
Here’s what I’m realizing: obedience can become idolatry. Idolatry can be as subtle as clinging to what I thought God was doing, and not embracing what He is doing.
God is comforting me and (maybe more importantly) teaching me how grief is supposed to work. It isn’t wrong to grieve. But when I fixate on what was never true, that fixation becomes false worship.
Tammuz is dead.
In fact, he was never alive.
God is the true, living God. You are His temple. What was alive will live again. What was never alive, and never true, isn’t yours to grieve.
I’ll probably never fully know the “why” of this in my life. But I suspect it’s also for you. And that helps.
The ache is still there. But I’m not grieving without hope anymore. Pain just means there’s more treasure to uncover here in this dark place.
What treasure does God want to give you in exchange for your grief?