A time to lament

This week marks the 60th anniversary of the Aberfan disaster. So much tragedy in one day in living memory. Rev Irving Penberthy, now aged 96, was the Methodist minister there at the time. The voice of God prompted him to divert to Aberfan on that day of unimaginable trauma. It was a ‘ministry of tears’ as he stood alongside fathers in sorrow in the Bethania Chapel where their children had been laid.

‘A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children
and refusing to be comforted’ (Matthew 2:18/Jeremiah 31:15)

What comfort could there possibly be for those who lost children and siblings? The weight of the grief was heavy to the point of being unbearable. Jesus knew that heaviness, ‘My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death (Matthew 26:38), he said in Gethsemane.

Irving talks of recalling Jesus’ words: ‘Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.’ (Matthew 19:14). These beloved children are in a place of eternal belonging.

When we prayer Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven we are asking God for glimpses of heaven until that time when there is a new heaven and a new earth, where God ‘will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away (Revelation 21:4); where all the things that mark the brokenness of this fallen world are made new.

It’s Bible Sunday this weekend where we will thank God for his Word that speaks into our reality. And when we find ourselves inconsolable, we join with lament in scripture until his kingdom comes.

With material from https://www.methodist.org.uk/about/our-stories/sixty-years-since-aberfan-a-minister-remembers/

Sarah Mortimer