I was talking to Grant’s old room mate a few nights ago; one of his best friends, more like a brother really.  We were checking in on each other.  As I asked him how he was doing, I was struck by his answer.  It was exactly where Glenn and I find ourselves often these days.  It looks something like this…

The panic and shock are gone, the heightened awareness of Grant’s absence is not the only thing we think about. The acute stabs of pain, which were once our constant companions, have been replaced with something else. Instead, in their place, there’s constant sadness, dullness, dread. In a word, we are haunted, tempted by apathy.

Grant’s friend even went on to say, “Something good happens and I think, ‘bleh.’ Something bad happens and I think, ‘bleh.’ Nothing seems to matter as it once did.  I just don’t feel like doing anything.”  Again, in a word, apathy.

I am no expert on grief, but I imagine this is quite normal. When you have lost something so dear to you, when you are faced with the brevity of life daily, and your eyes are fixed on the things of eternity in a way they never have been before, it’s hard to see the importance of things here.  So much of our lives are made up of the mundane, the ordinary. How do we prevent apathy from taking ahold of our souls?

I think by recognizing this. Everything matters. Because God exists then every good endeavor, even the simplest ones, pursued in response to God’s calling and done for His glory, can matter forever. All of the mundane tasks we do day-in and day-out, all of the ordinary tasks of life, they all have meaning when done to the glory of God! Even my suffering, if done for His glory,  will matter and have meaning. In reality, nothing else truly does matter. Only living a life with a heart set on things of eternal value, and doing them to glorify God, gives meaning to life, pain, and the mundane. I don’t want to live my life by rote memory. I want to live in the realization that everything I do matters to God and can be used by God. If I do it for Him, it turns the ordinary into the extraordinary!

Grant’s life will continue in how his death has changed me. I have seen a glimpse of the eternal in a new and fresh way, because Grant is there. And now I am forever ruined. I want what he has. Any goal that lacks the eternal as its purpose feels empty, meaningless. But as I continue to live this life, with the primary goal to glorify God in word and deed, it gives meaning and eternal weight to the mundane. It brings hope, for the life left here…