Voices in My Head (The Rick Lee James Podcast) Episode 610: Grief - the Persistent Widow

Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host, Rick Lee James, and I'm so glad that you're here with me again this week. Just to let you know, I'm recording this the day before I'm about to deliver this message in a chapel service here at the hospital, so there may be some hospital references in it. But also, it's in preparation for a workshop, which is not what I'm delivering here, but this coming weekend, the last weekend of January 2026, I will be delivering a workshop at at Cedarville University at the Worship 424 conference called Ministry Transitions: Grief and Loss. And while today I'm going to be doing this short message about grief and loss, it's not the same thing as what I will be presenting at Cedarville in the coming weekend. But I just wanted to make that preface, so if any of you are planning on coming to the workshop, listening to this is not going to take place of that that I'm doing, but they are very similar topics. So when you find yourself in a hospital like the place where I work, it's most likely because something has changed in your life or in the life of someone else that affects you. Often this presents a crisis for us. In the hospital, people have told me, "Before I came in here, I felt like a young person, and now I feel old, like my best days are behind me." And that's a reality. Hospitals are often an in-between place where we live between who we were and who we are becoming, who we will be. But you're still the same person at the same time. And between the expectations we had and the reality of where we are now, this is often where we live in the hospital. Many of us are between the life we had, the life we are learning to live, and chances are if you're a patient, If you're a loved one, or even if you're a caregiver, you're here because something in your life has changed. Something important is no longer the same. We may not realize it, but this is a form of loss. And whenever this happens, there's grief involved. Grief is not only something that happens to us when someone dies. Grief and loss happen anytime something meaningful in our lives is lost. If it's threatened or if it's even changed, this is all considered loss. A diagnosis that we get can bring us grief. A surgery can bring grief. In churches, the search for a new pastor and the loss of an old one can bring grief. A future that once looked more certain now becoming uncertain can bring grief. And even healing can bring grief for what had to be endured in order to get to that place of healing. That can be a loss in itself. And there's a kind of grief that comes before the loss even happens that we call in chaplaincy anticipate— anticipatory grief, or grief that we anticipate something that we know is coming even though it hasn't happened yet. It's, it's what comes before a loss while a loss is still unfolding. It's the kind of thing that happens when In my church, for instance, it happened very recently when my senior pastor of 20 years resigned so that he could retire, a well-deserved retirement which was needed. And yet, even while he was still there, after the announcement was made, our church entered into anticipatory grief, the grief for what might be lost, the fear of what may be coming and what may never be the same again. It's quiet, it's exhausting, and it does not go away just because we try to ignore it. And this brings us to the scripture passage that I want to look at today, which is found in Luke's Gospel. In Luke chapter 18, Jesus tells a little story about a widow who keeps coming to an unrighteous judge asking for judgment, and the judge doesn't care about her, he doesn't respect her, He would prefer that she simply goes away, but she doesn't. She keeps knocking. She keeps showing up. She keeps asking for help. And eventually, in this parable, as we're about to hear, the judge gives in, not because he's compassionate, but because her persistence wears him down. Well, Jesus says something surprising. He says that even if, if even an unjust judge responds to persistence, how much more will God respond to those who cry out? And I want to take a little bit of a different twist on that parable today. So let me read it. Luke, beginning with the 18th verse of chapter 18. Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said, in a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in the town who kept coming to him with the 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' For some time he refused, but finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice so that she won't eventually come and attack me.' And the Lord said, 'Listen to what the unjust judge says, and will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night?' Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly. However, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth? I want to suggest something today as we look at that scripture passage. I want to suggest that grief is also like that persistent widow. You can try to ignore it. You can tell it to go away. You can try to distract yourself from it, but grief and loss, they will keep knocking. Grief keeps showing up in the quiet moments, in the sleepless nights, and the aches in your body which tell the toll, in the feeling of heaviness that just won't quite lift. Grief and loss is happening not because something is wrong with you, but because something mattered very much in your life and that thing is either lost or is in danger of being lost. And grief does not knock on our hearts because it wants to hurt us. Grief knocks because it needs to be heard. It's the way we're made as humans. When grief is knocking on our heart's door and we refuse to answer it, it won't go away. It'll knock louder. If it doesn't— if we don't open the door, he'll try to get in through the windows. And if we don't open the windows, it'll try to break the glass and climbs down the chimney. It just shows up in the backseat of our car when we get in to go to work in the morning. It follows us like a stalker. I know that's kind of scary sounding, but it's true. We can try to outrun it all we want, but grief is persistent. It will not leave until it's dealt with, and the sooner it's dealt with, the healthier it is. Many people feel ashamed of this and they think, I should be stronger, I should just get over this, or I should have more faith, but I want to emphasize this, that grief is not a spiritual failure. It is a human response to loss. In some ways, grief is actually love expressing itself. And here is a deeper truth that Jesus offers in this parable. As persistent as something like grief can be, God is even more persistent. God is more persistent than our grief. The unrelenting love of God keeps pursuing us, keeps listening for us, keeps meeting us in our pain. God keeps showing up at the door of our lives even when all we have to offer is exhaustion, anger, and silence. You know, the beautiful thing about parables is that they were written without an agenda that requires us to read them only one way. And the way I read this parable, I see God as that persistent widow who keeps knocking on the doors of our hearts. In the Christian tradition, we see this again and again. The Psalms are full of people who refuse to stop crying out. Jesus himself prays in anguish in the garden. He prays often. He prays in solitary places consistently. Jesus does not hide his distress. Jesus does not hide his grief. Jesus is the image of the invisible God, and even Jesus keeps knocking on heaven's door. And faith does not mean you stop knocking. Faith means you keep bringing what hurts to the one who listens. So if grief has been knocking at your door, I really want you to know something today. It does not mean you are weak or broken. It doesn't mean you're failing in your faith. By embracing grief, you are being honest about what you have lost and what you fear losing. And I want to encourage you, even more than embracing your grief, embrace the God who is relentlessly pursuing you. And who is already embracing you. The God who is even more persistent than the widow in this parable, even more persistent than your grief. And this God is not tired of hearing from you. You don't have to tidy up your pain before you bring it to the Lord. You don't have to have the right words. You don't have to be calm. You can come angry and frustrated and fearful and lonely and depressed and guilty and hurt and mad. Just be like the widow though, and keep coming to this God who will not stop coming to you. And in this place, in the space between, like a hospital between what was and what will be, you are not alone. So please be gentle with yourself today. I want to encourage you to answer the door when grief is knocking. And may you trust that you will be held in your grief and in your loss by the God who is even more persistent than your grief and even more persistent than the widow in that story. As I close today, I want to bring you a gentle word. And this word is not from scripture, but it's actually from a TV show that I watched called Sweet Tooth. And it's a word about loss that I think closes this message out perfectly today. And it says this: It's a difficult thing letting go. It's tough to say goodbye. But the thing we don't always realize, when we let go of something, it opens up a little space to grow. It shows us who we are, what we're capable of. We find out what really matters and who we really were all along. I want to remind you today that even in your loss, God creates spaces to grow. That, that thing that is lost to you, I want to remind you that you are never lost to God. I hope you'll be encouraged by that today, that you'll be able to let go of those griefs and those hurts and those harms. Let go of trying to push them off, I guess I should say, and just embrace letting them in so that God can do a new work in your heart. God bless you. Thank you so much for listening to Voices in My Head this week. I hope this has been a help to you, and I hope that if you're going to be at the Worship 424 conference, you'll come to my workshop. Our transitions in ministry, grief, and loss. God bless you, and thank you for being here for Voices in My Head this week.