{"id":3251,"date":"2017-10-06T08:47:38","date_gmt":"2017-10-06T15:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/?p=3251"},"modified":"2017-10-09T14:47:58","modified_gmt":"2017-10-09T21:47:58","slug":"a-grief-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/2017\/10\/06\/a-grief-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"A Grief Experienced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We were all affected by the recent death of Dominic Laffoon, one of our own, just 18 years old, recently became an Eagle Scout,\u00a0 beloved by all.\u00a0 The shock of it, its suddenness, and the over-whelming heaviness was felt by all at worship on September 17<sup>th<\/sup>, and will continue for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 His memorial service (still pending at this writing) will continue the grieving process.<\/p>\n<p>What can we say about this? It isn\u2019t fair, but then much of life is not fair.\u00a0 Can we even begin to know the reasons why Dominic passed? We can know the medical reasons, but what about the spiritual reasons?\u00a0 People like to say \u201cEverything happens for a reason,\u201d and yet, do they?\u00a0 I don\u2019t believe that God caused Dom\u2019s death, except to allow it to happen.\u00a0\u00a0 Cancer caused his death, and cancer, like all of the other evils in this world, is a direct result of our sin.\u00a0 And sin is the product of human free will to turn against God.\u00a0 So it would be more correct to say that we (humanity) caused his death.<\/p>\n<p>I prefer to say, with St. Paul, that \u201call things work together for good, for those who are called according to [God\u2019s] purpose\u201d (Romans 8:28).\u00a0 That is to say, that as gut-wrenchingly horrible as dom\u2019s death is, God is able and will bring some good out of it.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what it will be, and it may be many years before we perceive it, but I trust in God.\u00a0 In the mean time, we need to comfort one another, especially the Laffoon family.\u00a0 And we need to hold out the possibility of God\u2019s redemption of this tragedy.\u00a0 Not that it will ever be \u201cok\u201d, but that in some distant time, perhaps, we will see the goodness of God revealed through it all.<\/p>\n<p>I invite you to hold on to this hope.<\/p>\n<p>In Christ,<\/p>\n<p>Pastor Glen<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We were all affected by the recent death of Dominic Laffoon, one of our own, just 18 years old, recently became an Eagle Scout,\u00a0 beloved by all.\u00a0 The shock of it, its suddenness, and the over-whelming heaviness was felt by all at worship on September 17th, and will continue for the foreseeable future.\u00a0 His memorial [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1169,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,90,104,102],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-news","category-families","category-fellowship","category-pastoral"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3251"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3278,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3251\/revisions\/3278"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thefount.church\/church\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}