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Grief UndoneMarch 23, 2015
New Book by Elizabeth Groves Elizabeth (Libbie) Groves, lecturer in Old Testament, has recently published a new book, Grief Undone: A Journey with God and Cancer. Now available at Westminster Bookstore. Grief Undone is the breathtakingly honest, yet hopeful account of how Libbie and Al Groves walked with God through Al’s terminal cancer. Their true story—saturated with in-the-moment Scriptural reflections, blogs, and fervent prayers—paints a stunning picture of how faith transforms the human experience of suffering. But Grief Undone is more than the chronicle of one family’s courage in the face of cancer. At its core, Grief Undone tells a story about the God who is with his people through each and every circumstance in life. Grief Undone will inevitably display the beauty of Christ’s sustaining love for his people through trials that seemed too hard to bear. Though grief threatens to undo us, we find that we are not destroyed, but sustained by God’s presence. Story-driven and real, Grief Undone avoids the usual traps of being preachy, gratuitous, or dismissive in the face of suffering and grief. Modeling rather than teaching about healthy and God-honoring grief, Grief Undone is uniquely practical for those who are grieving as well as the pastors, counselors, and friends who seek to help them. “This is a painful, but hopeful book to read. For those of us privileged to have known Al and Libbie as a couple, this book is a poignant reminder of a lost friend. But it is more than that. It is also a powerful plea for the reader to take seriously the truth of the gospel and a trenchant reminder of how Jesus Christ stands with his people in even the darkest of times and will bring them ultimately through death to their eternal home.” “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ This promise of Christ is not only for the apostle Paul, as this volume so convincingly and winsomely evidences. Though written in a highly personal vein, it does not so much draw attention to the author as it does to Christ’s sustaining and sanctifying sufficiency. Here is hope and encouragement for Christians undergoing similar circumstances. Grief Undone indeed.” “We struggle to give words to our experience of grief. In this book, Libbie has done a great service to all pilgrims who have laid another in the grave to await the resurrection from the dead. This is certainly a book to read slowly, prayerfully, and in conversation with others. It is deeply human and deeply heaven-ward at the same time. Read it and taste comingled grief and renewal. Just as the Psalms tell it and Al would have wanted it.” “In Grief Undone, the reader is given the most honest and vivid picture of the walk through the valley of the shadow of death that I have ever read. There is the depth of both the valley and the darkness. But in these brief and engaging chapters there is also the constant presence of the Shepherd whose triumph over death gives the reader true comfort to believe that ‘I need not fear for thou art with me.’” |
