Practical Theology / Grief and Death

  • True Shepherding by Joel Beeke

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    Every morning for several months, my wife and I walked past an injured Canada goose, whose feathers stuck out in several directions. For all those months, several geese dutifully stayed with the injured bird. Likewise, caring for the wounded is …Read More

  • A Mother in Israel by Derek Thomas

    FROM TABLETALK | June 2007

    Jacob, the wily one, after ten or fifteen years, finally returns to Bethel. God has been at work in his life, drawing the wayward patriarch to himself. It has been a difficult journey. It invariably is so when our …Read More

  • The Beautiful Tears by Makoto Fujimura

    FROM TABLETALK | September 2010

    In John 11, Jesus weeps. His tears, shed in response to Lazarus’ death and Mary and Martha’s grief, are full of embodied truth, beauty, and goodness. Why did Jesus weep? He delayed coming to Bethany “so that the Son …Read More

  • Holy Grief by Chris Donato

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2006

    In the coming days, we will see a lot of what Scripture has to say about God’s holiness. We will also see how His holiness informs both His love and His wrath. No doubt, too, we will recognize that …Read More

  • Good Grief? by Anthony Carter

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    I suppose I grew up like most of my generation, reading and watching Charlie Brown and the rest of the cast of Charles Schultz’s PEANUTS. Schultz had an uncanny ability to relate a sea of emotion in a cup …Read More

  • Mourn with Those Who Mourn by Archie Parrish

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    Yesterday, Helen told me that her husband, Gerry, is now a quadriplegic. In college, Helen was my wife’s roommate, and Gerry and I lived in the same dorm. Helen was maid of honor at our wedding. When we graduated …Read More

  • The School of Jesus Christ by David Powlison

    FROM TABLETALK | July 2009

    When I first received the intelligence of the death…of your son Louis, I was so utterly overpowered that for many days I was fit for nothing but to grieve; and albeit I was somehow upheld before the Lord by …Read More

  • From Grief to Glory by James Coffield

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    My father was slowly relinquishing his fragile life. His once sharp mind was now confused with the bleakness of Alzheimer’s. The cumulative effect of the medication to sustain his heart was destroying his liver, and the drugs needed to …Read More

  • A Grief Observed by R.C. Sproul

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    What’s wrong with this picture? I’m speaking of my assignment for this month’s issue of Tabletalk. Over the years, my articles have been generally written out of a concern to communicate content of a biblical or theological …Read More

  • A Tale of Two Funerals by Gene Edward Veith

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    A young man I knew died in a tragic traffic accident. His death was utterably sad. At his funeral, his friends were all wearing T-shirts adorned with his picture. At the front of the church were heaped up flowers, footballs …Read More

  • Death, Disease & the Gospel by Burk Parsons

    FROM TABLETALK | October 2011

    I was sixteen when my father died. It was a Sunday evening in late September of 1992 when I heard the news of his death. I had just returned from work when my mother came into my room in tears …Read More

  • Dying Well by Derek Thomas

    FROM TABLETALK | January 2007

    Sarah lived 127 years…. And Sarah died…. And Abraham went in to mourn for Sarah and to weep for her” (Gen. 23:1–2). Sarah and Abraham had been married fifty-two years. He would live almost four decades without …Read More

  • How Now Shall We Die? by John Blanchard

    FROM TABLETALK | October 2011

    Woody Allen, the well-known movie director, screenwriter, and actor, once said, “I’m not afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” The quirky quotation is famous but fatally flawed. God has the date …Read More

  • Sin, Death, and Grief by Burk Parsons

    FROM TABLETALK | April 2007

    My father was a veteran of World War II, the son of a small-town country preacher, school teacher, and sheriff, the son-in-law of the automobile manufacturer Preston Tucker, a fellow college graduate of Sam Walton, the leader of one …Read More

  • The Gospel and the Oncology Waiting Room by Mike Pohlman

    FROM TABLETALK | July 2011

    I recently sat with my wife in the waiting room at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance. We were there to meet with Dr. Lupe Salazar to receive the results of Julia’s latest PET/CT scans. The goal: to determine …Read More