May 13: Heartbreak Into Hope

By the Venerable Calhoun Walpole,
Archdeacon of the Diocese of South Carolina

Those who sowed with tears,
 Will reap with songs of joy.
 
Psalm 126 gives us great assurance that we will ultimately pass through any and all pain into joy.
 
The poet David Whyte writes the following concerning heartbreak:
 
“Heartbreak is the natural outcome of caring for people and things over which we have no control, of holding in our affections those who move beyond our sight.” He goes on to note that “heartbreak is how we mature; yet we use the word as if it only occurs when things have gone wrong.” The poet invites us to see heartbreak “not as the end of the road or the cessation of hope but “as inescapable and inevitable as breathing, as part and parcel of every path…the close embrace of the essence of what we have wanted or are about to lose. It is the hidden DNA of our relationship with life…an inescapable and often beautiful question, something and someone that has been with us all along.”
 
What does heartbreak look like for you in your own life?  
 
Lord Jesus, let our minds rest in your Word, so that when doubt and grief would overwhelm us, faith will open our eyes to see your hand at work in our life and enable us to turn toward the future with hope and toward each other in charity. Amen.

(From the prayer at the Third Station of Stations of the Resurrection by Forward Day by Day.)
 
Yours faithfully,
Callie