Do We Grieve for Ourselves?

SOURCE:  https://tonycooke.org/funeral-resources/sample_funeral2/

KEYWORDS:  death, dying, grief, funeral, graveside, committal, resurrection, love, life

When the wife of the evangelist Charles Finney died, he grieved deeply.  Here are his words describing the experience:

My wife was gone!  I should never hear her speak again nor see her face!  Her children were motherless!  What should I do?  My brain seemed to reel, as if my mind would swing from its pivot.  I rose instantly from my bed exclaiming, “I shall be deranged if I cannot rest in God!”  The Lord soon calmed my mind for that night, but still, at times, seasons of sorrow would come over me that were almost overwhelming.

One day I was upon my knees, fellowshipping with God upon the subject, and all at once He seemed to say to me, “You loved your wife?”  “Yes,” I said. “Well, did you love her for her own sake or for your sake? Did you love her or yourself?  If you loved her for her own sake, why do you sorrow that she is with me?  Should not her happiness with me make you rejoice instead of mourn if you loved her for her own sake?”

“Did you love her,” He seemed to say to me, “for my sake?  If you loved her for my sake, surely you would not grieve that she is with me.  Why do you think of your loss, and lay so much stress up that, instead of thinking of her gain?  Can you be sorrowful when she is so joyful and happy?  If you loved her for her own sake, would you not rejoice in her joy and be happy in her happiness?”

I can never describe the feelings that came over me when I seemed to be thus addressed.  It produced an instantaneous change in the whole state of my mind.

From that moment, sorrow, on account of my loss, was gone forever.  I no longer thought of my wife as dead, but as alive, and in the midst of the glories of heaven.

(Memoirs of Charles G. Finney, p. 382)