“To console those who mourn in Zion,

To give them beauty for ashes,

The oil of joy for mourning,

The garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness;

That they may be called trees of righteousness,

The planting of the Lord, that He may be glorified.” Isaiah 61:3

Last week I wrote about my dear Aunt Mary Cupp’s homegoing to the Lord in the post entitled Heaven’s Dance. I told about the cherishing that so many have for her due to the rare ways that she had of blessing others with her deep wisdom, great works of kindness, and her everyday humor--fit instantly to the present moment. It is a balm to hold close these memories like a stitched coverlet to growth that she entrusted to me for protection and encouragement. These scenes keep rolling through my heart--so many more, like private love messages delivered to the gates of a fragrant garden for my tender perusal.

And so it is that this week I want to linger over the mourning that comes with the loss of those so precious to us.

It is so true that we all grieve in quite different ways, and that the intensity of the surges of loss comes in waves—great tsunamis at times, gentle lulling flip waves at others, and sometimes a peaceful long stretch to the horizon. A sight, sound, scent, an intonation of voice, a certain laugh, a quality of the wind, and the glow of a sunbeam can set the waves of mourning to leaping, and they can threaten to engulf.

It was on a recent late afternoon walk that I saw the picture I have posted with the shadows of the mighty trunked trees, their branches and foliage being held in the arms of a beautiful circular trail. Immediately I thought of Aunt Mary and of how she would have marveled over this artistry, given her joy in the personality of every tree she had ever encountered. What was I to do with the beauty of this reflection feeling that it was mine to hold alone now?

I knew that there was something in the Scripture, a verse penned exactly to the pitch of this sorrow. I did the word searches and the Isaiah 61 passage quoted above was given to me. Not only did it send me its love note concerning the majestic trees, but also the entirety of the passage was about the ashes that we can be smitten with in the loss of our loved ones.

It talked about a consolation for us--a godly exchange that can only be supernatural. There was no “dust to dust” blank stare from this page. Where I felt the brevity of flesh, it said that I could expect to receive beauty for those ashes. For my mourning it broke the oil of gladness from the top of my head to my feet over the fact that I had my Aunt Mary, kept in Him for eternity. My heaviness over holding the image of the trees alone left me enwrapped in a seamless cloak of praise over how He does everything well for us. I would not have seen them without her early instruction to the intensity of noticing the wonder all about us. The trees were not just simply trees with their own life span, but they were a sign of righteousness, the kind that can only be planted by the Lord. This righteousness can only eventuate in glorifying the One who planned and planted it all—the One who gave me my Aunt Mary.

Between the time that I started to write this entry earlier in the day, and now, I discovered that two trees actually have fallen upon the Cupp household as a result of the devastating storm called Sandy that hit the Eastern half of the Country in the last two days!

I could not believe that two trees were also the theme of my thoughts on grief. The Lord graciously allowed my beloved Uncle, and Cousin to be rescued in safety from the farmhouse that sits alone on the side of a beautiful Pennsylvania mountain.

Aunt Mary did not have to see her treasured home take the awful hit from the trees that she enjoyed every day. She wasn’t there sick in the living room as the catastrophe struck.

I really thought about scrapping this entire post because I knew that even the mighty trees in my picture could also fall given the brutal winds and waters that Cupp’s Hill had sustained. I couldn’t equate the collision of the metaphor of the trees from Isaiah and my picture that had brought me such a balm, with the two crashing trees at my Aunt’s home.

Then I saw it~~the tree imagery that the Scripture used was not about a real tree that can fall, but it was about how we can be built up into a planting by staying in His might when we are assured of His beauty in the ashes, His joy in the mourning, and His praise in the heaviness. The earthly tree will fall, but the spiritual one--the tree of righteousness--will not, because its life-sap is the staying power of the Holy Spirit of Jesus within us. Wasn’t this the thing that Aunt Mary always represented to me~~seeing holiness in the mundane, even in the sometimes horribly mundane? She would have wanted me to revel in the now standing trees and to be pointed by them inward, where eternity is planted.

The greatest peace that I have found in mourning is how entirely Jesus always identified with us in each of our sorrows. When He stood outside of Lazarus’ tomb, knowing full well that He was about to raise him from the dead, He wept right along with the friends at the graveside. He was moved at the deepest places by our grief. He knew better than anyone else there about the phrase from Song of Solomon 8:6~~ “…For love is as strong as death...” He wept over our earthly losses, and would soon be the loving sacrifice that triumphed over death everlastingly.

And as He wept, I just think about the many trees of righteousness that He planted in hearts that day by how much He loves us, and by how much He knew that soon, and very soon, He would give us the full victory over death by His Cross—the prototype of the Tree of Righteousness. Yes, Aunt Mary would want me to catch this truth as it blows on Holy Spirit winds through the branches of the trees I find on my walks of Love.