Daily Devotion – May 9, 2020 – Roy Hammerling
Matthew 2:13-18
“. . . Rachel weeping for her children; she refused to be consoled, because they were no more.”
Refusing Consolation
The organization “Compassionate Friends” aids parents who have lost children. Once a pastor, a member of this group, visited a parishioner, a woman in her 90s. The woman confessed that her greatest agony in life was that she had a stillborn child, 70 years earlier. She said, “Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.” Like Rachel, in the biblical text for today, and the parents of the holy innocents, whom Herod slaughtered, this great grandmother refused to be consoled, because her child was no more. Augustine in his Confessions (IV.9) says of a friend’s death, “Grief shrouded my heart. Wherever I looked I saw death. Even my home tortured me… Everything I shared with my friend became hideous anguish… My life was a horror to me.” Death at times simply does not allow consolation. Rachel, the woman in her 90s, and all who suffer great grief, sometimes have no comfort, save in that day when all sorrow ends. Nevertheless, a small measure of consolation comes when compassionate friends allow those who are suffering to talk about their hurt. Where two or three are gathered, there is consolation, if only a momentary one, and there is God in their midst.
Prayer: Our good dwells only in your keeping, O God, though life is a troubled way, you alone offer us consolation when we will not abide it. Amen.
Prayer Concerns: For all who can or will not be consoled.
