Articles
Grief - 3: A Grandfather's Prayer
The following is the text of a prayer offered by Russ Roberts, Fair Robert’s grandfather, at the conclusion of her memorial service three weeks ago. Fair passed away unexpectedly just after her fifth birthday.
To our most gracious and glorious heavenly Father, the Everlasting Being who is raised above our comprehension. Seated upon the throne in the heights of the third heaven …
We approach You this day with our human emotions reaching far beyond their expected limits. Your commitment to the effectiveness of our prayers has allowed us unobstructed, immediate access directly into Your presence. We are once again lifting up our thoughts to You this morning as a united petition of thanksgiving and joy.
Just two weeks ago our young, little Fairfax’ hospital room was filled with numerous professional lifesavers with the most up to date, modern gadgets and contraptions connected to her. Lord, as insignificant as their efforts may be in Your eyes, she was in the best care of one of the best children’s hospital facilities in our world. Doctors were pondering late in the evening to try one more thing. And we are most confident, Father, that this is the best that mortal man could have physically accomplished. Every human remedy was attempted to spare her life.
But You, O God, and You only have the power to give life, to save life, and have the power to take it away. This pathway of prayer, which we are accessing this morning, was completely worn out in the past few weeks in one unbroken plea, as we talked about already, throughout multiple continents on Your created earth. We pierced every time zone as brethren near to us uttered their prayers to You and fell asleep in the wee hours of the night, hour by hour – as one hymnist writes – sweet lips from Your people in faraway lands were carrying this up in a unified plea for two extended days. Fairfax’ name, along with her immediate family, was specifically laid before Your throne of defined grace, in the hope of allowing her to be with us just a little longer – one continuous prayer.
We have pleaded using every ounce of our energy, as You have asked us to do, leaving no thoughts or wishes hidden from our appeals. You asked us to bring everything and anything before You. And with faithful confidence we know that You have heard each and every syllable. We are all assured by Your word that You love us, and the heavenly actions of this divine love are always completed in the best interests of Your purpose. This was clearly demonstrated when You sent Your own Child as a selfless sacrifice for our benefit. This also extends the reach of our comprehension. We know that our pleas have reached Your throne, and we respectfully have concluded that You said, “No.”
In our prayers and our solemn requests, Father, we know that we have uttered things that we do not understand, things too wonderful for us to grasp, but we obtain the most sincere confidence that it is best for Fair to be with You. This is best for us, and it is best for Your purpose. So we come before You this morning with our hands laid over our mouth in awe and wonder. And though we cannot fathom how this is nested into Your omniscient picture, we humbly accept Fair’s passing with sadness, but again, with thanksgiving. We are thankful for the five years of joy that we had with her and are blessed by the fact that You gave her to us even for a short while.
Our prayers, however, have now taken a shift for a much different purpose. These are the same voices and the same hearts that have spoken to You in these past weeks. We come to You in the same reverence directed to the exactly same throne. But these are our ardent prayers for healing and comfort. There are hearts within this audience who have lifted up identical prayers of healing in recent months for the loss of a son, a loss of a father, the loss of a mother, brother and a dear friend. For some of us here, these are fresh wounds. But others of this combined assembly we know that it simply reopens an existing scar that had just begun to be repaired. You know all of this. We pray for healing and comfort.
We specifically pray for Will and Sarah, for Sally Roe, Emmie and Kate. Mend their shattered hearts. Please do everything in Your limitless power to intervene in their lives to heal this deep, deep injury. But, heavenly Father, we also respectfully send our request for the healing for a second generation of sorrows, for the parents of this family, the brothers and the sisters, the cousins, the aunts and the uncles, and to the third and beyond generations – to help mend the sorrow which has been placed upon sorrow of our extended family, friends and brethren that are here today. The healing we request is from a hand that can only descend from eternity.
We conclude this prayer and humble service with thanksgiving. We are thankful of Your grace and mercy upon Your creation in giving us Your Son so that these earthly experiences can be placed within a spiritual perspective of joy. It was only through Your Son’s passing that it is possible for us to live forever in glory. You have assured us that our current agony and sufferings in this life, no matter the harshness, cannot be compared to the glory in which the faithful will experience in the day of our resurrection.
Glory is real, and although heaven cannot be anymore wonderful than it currently exists, Fair’s presence among the saints who have reached eternity before us help us yearn for our home with You even that much more. For all of us standing on the banks of this side of the Jordan, we visualize but a simple glimpse of the promised land. We can only imagine the glory of what Anna Fairfax must now experience, for she is resting in that fair and happy land where night has been scattered completely away. Our comfort comes from the inspired words of Your apostle Paul who reminds us that one day all of the faithful who are alive, and those who have fallen asleep in eternity, will be caught up together to meet our Lord in the air when He returns. And thus we shall be with the Lord forever.
Thank you, Lord. Continue the healing for a long, long time. Through this event heaven has become much, much clearer, and for this we rejoice and are comforted. We, of course, pray all of this through Your righteous Son’s name, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
