Archive for the ‘death’ Category
Where All Waters Join
Sometimes grief does not cry out—it drifts, carried by the same current that once bore our joy.
There are moments when loss comes not as thunder but as reflection—when the world stands still, and what we see is not the end but a continuation, changed in form.
I wrote this after a dream of a river and a face that was both Ophelia’s and hers—the one I loved more than life itself.
It is not about death, not really. It’s about arrival: the mystery of the one who was, the one who is, and the one who has yet to come.
I offer it here in gratitude and quiet wonder, a meditation on how love endures beyond the reach of hands.
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I see Ophelia floating, dreamlike,
on the current of a cold river.
The water moves with a whispering insistence,
brushing against stones polished by centuries of sorrow.
Her body is already still,
her face molded by the mercy of the chill
into a child’s perpetual smile.
Then the surface wavers,
and I recognize the curve of her mouth—
not Shakespeare’s daughter of grief,
but the woman I loved more than life itself.
The recognition is the wound.
Not that she is gone,
but that I can no longer feel the warmth
that once made her real.
The ache lives in my hands,
in what they remember
and the water refuses to return.
Yet even as I kneel on the bank,
a strange peace rises.
The river does not end;
it only carries her beyond my reach.
In its mirrored flow I see three arrivals:
the one who was — radiant and laughing in sunlight;
the one who is — still, luminous, beyond decay;
and the one who is yet to come —
the presence that will meet me when my own current slows.
I do not call it faith,
only recognition —
that love does not vanish;
it merely changes address.
The current carries her onward,
and somewhere downstream,
in water not yet visible,
I believe she waits —
not to return,
but to receive.
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And so I let the river keep her, trusting that love, like water, knows its way home.
A lyrical reflection on loss and arrival. Through the image of a woman floating on a twilight river, “Where All Waters Join” explores how love endures beyond separation, and how grief, carried by the current, can become peace.
God in the Silence
There are silences that wound. The silence between two people who no longer know how to speak to one another. The silence after a loss so great that words cannot carry its weight. The silence of God, or what feels like God’s absence, when prayer becomes little more than breath.
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I have lived with such silence. I thought it safer than speech, thought it might protect others from the depth of my sorrow. But silence has its own cost. It isolates. It hardens. It makes a person a stranger even to those who love them most.
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And yet, in Romans Paul dares to say that even silence can be prayer. “The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.” Which means that what I cannot say, God still hears. What I withhold, God still knows. What weighs me down with unspeakable grief, God lifts up and carries into the very heart of heaven.
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This is a mystery. That the silence which feels like absence may, in truth, be full of God’s presence. That the groan we never utter may already be on the Spirit’s lips. That even when our mouths are closed, intimacy remains possible.
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And perhaps this is our calling as servants of Christ—
not always to speak, not always to fix,
but sometimes simply to sit in the quiet with those who cannot speak.
To believe on their behalf.
To let silence be enough.
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Because in the silence, God is already there.
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Into Your Embrace
For thirty-two years
I kept the secret of my grief.
Poems unwritten,
words withheld,
a silence so heavy
it bricked the walls of our life.
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For you,
who bore my silence
as I bore my sorrow,
you waited beside me,
through winters of hush,
through the long dark.
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Now I write—
a voice for the dead,
and a voice for you,
the living beside me.
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You said,
I would have loved them.
And whispered,
When I am gone,
will you remember me?
Your words cut me open
like a blade through cloth.
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Who will deliver me?
Who will raise me
from the fall,
the fall of my silence?
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For you,
who bore my silence
as I bore my sorrow,
let me lean,
let me lean into your embrace.
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Let me breathe out dust and ashes,
the silence I have carried like stone.
Let me breathe in the fire of your breath,
the wine of your love,
the warmth of your body beside me.
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For you,
for you,
for you—
into your embrace.
Grace in the Ruins
David Wilkerson 9/25/2025
I buried belief with her,
creeds don’t keep the night away)
Faith staggered, thin as breath-ing,
(I thought it too would fade).
But sorrow split the silence,
and beauty cut me through,
a goodness in the dark-ness
I had no right to choose.
Call it grace, call it love,
(call it nothing, call it enough)
What I lost returns as whisper—
(not a for-tress, just a song).
Call it grace, call it love,
(too frail to prove, too strong to hush)
In the ruins I belong.
Experience is brutal,
(but it will not be denied)
In the chamber of her dying
I heard life refuse to hide.
Belief came back as language,
a trembling in my chest.
To name what can’t be spoken
is the only faith that’s left.
Call it grace, call it love,
(call it nothing, call it enough)
What I lost returns as whisper—
(not a fortress, just a song).
Call it grace, call it love,
(too frail to prove, too strong to hush)
In the ruins I belong.
Oh, I thought the silence would break me,
(but it held me like a hymn).
What I buried rose to name me,
(and I let it breathe again).
Call it grace, call it love,
(call it nothing, call it enough).
In the ruins, in the ashes,
it was faith that learned to sing.
Call it grace, call it love,
(too frail to prove, too strong to hush).
And belief—belief returned—
as the song it could not bring.
“In the ruins I belong.”
Experience, Faith, and Belief
Belief, faith, and experience are often confused, but they are not the same.
Belief is assent of the mind—accepting doctrines or creeds. It gives structure, but can become brittle. Faith is entrustment of the heart—leaning one’s life into God, even without proof or reward. It endures when belief falters. Experience is lived encounter—moments of grief, beauty, or awe that ground us in reality and sometimes surprise us with grace.
Each on its own is incomplete. Belief without experience grows sterile. Experience without belief becomes chaotic. Faith without experience risks turning into grim endurance.
But when the three converge—belief giving shape, experience giving weight, and faith sustaining trust—we find something resilient enough to face both desolation and amazement.
For me, in the long illness and death of my wife, it was not belief that carried me, nor even faith as I had once preached it. It was experience—a haunting sense of pervasive good in a world otherwise hostile—that became the soil where faith could live.
On a whim... 