Seasons of Sorrow:
The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God
By Tim Challies
Zondervan, 2022
Reviewed BY Siobhan & Gerry Laskey
EVERYONE experiences grief. We have grieved the deaths of friends and family, including our only son, Sean, who died at the age of eleven. For Canadian Tim Challies, a Christian pastor, author and blogger, the sudden death of his son, Nick, on a playing field at the age of twenty, led him to process his grief by keeping a journal of reflections published as Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God.
Like the Challies family, we belong to that ‘exclusive club’ that no one wants to join, whose ‘dues’ are a broken heart. While ‘bereaved parents’ have no designation in English like “widows” or “orphans,” we do hold many things in common. All grief is individual and changes through the ‘seasons,’ like the ebb and flow of ocean waves. Those waves of grief can at any time crash over us with surprisingly raw and powerful force. One recognizes it permanently changes us, but, as Challies states, it does not (totally) define us.
Written ‘in real time’ during that year of all the ‘firsts’ (birthday, holidays, and the first anniversary of the death – what Challies’ calls “the last ‘first’”), it is an extraordinary gift. Forged in tears and shared with courage and depth of spirit, it is well-crafted, moving and sometimes poetic. Readers will identify with many of these generously shared experiences and reflections but may find their own thoughts and experiences diverging somewhat. This should be expected with any honest sharing of personal grief. Shortly after our son’s death, C.S. Lewis’ A Grief Observed did not resonate with us as much as it would a year or two later. Wherever one is on their personal journey of grief (or accompanying someone on theirs) we are confident there is much treasure to be mined in this book.
This book brought tears of recognition; of sorrow mixed with joy – something Challies declares essential in Christian grief. He recalls watching a movie with a character’s death that troubled three-year-old Nick. As they cuddled together, father and son discussed death and heaven. Heaven is, Challies told Nick, “a place where boys and their daddies can be together forever.” Once while watching TV, Sean turned to his father and said, “I hope you just never die.” His father said that unless Jesus returns first, we will all die someday, but that will probably not be very soon. Challies wrote at that time, “I hope, I trust, I pray… that when someday Nick’s eyes close in death, he and I will be reunited in that place where death will be no more, where there will be no more mourning, pain, or sorrow and where God will have already wiped away the tears that filled his little eyes.” Recalling this after Nick’s death, he writes: “I would never have imagined that it would not be me waiting for Nick in heaven, but Nick waiting in heaven for me. But I am certain he will be.” These “retrospectively foreshadowing’ discussions of death with our children are bittersweet, yet precious memories if we “unnaturally” outlive them, and a reminder of how important such conversations are with our children.
Challies, as any serious Christian who is grieving, honestly embraces both his suffering and pain and the truth and goodness of God and his Word. Wrestling with Scripture passages such as Romans 8:28, “All things work together for good to those who love God” helps us grow in faith. It will not be easy, but God and Scripture take our griefs, our doubts, our agonies seriously and compassionately. In chapter 13, entitled: “I believe, help my unbelief!”, Challies praises a Gospel father’s “words of faithful honesty, of honest faithfulness” – his trust “mixed with uncertainty.” He writes, “My cry, too, is often, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’”
For some, Challies may overemphasize the idea that God ‘took’ Nick. The Prayer Book Burial sentences enshrine from Job: “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Our experience, while not denying Scripture, is more nuanced. God allowed our son to die, receiving Sean to Himself. We trust God, his goodness and sovereignty and do not expect to see the whole picture from God’s perspective in this life.
Challies testifies to the amazing strength those grieving find in the tender care of our Christian family – the Mystical Body of Christ. That compassion and witness of God’s love through others is a sustaining Grace in the midst of sorrow.
Readers may find similarities and contrasts with Challies’ experiences and choices and their own. Unlike the Challies family, we chose to see Sean in his casket prior to the funeral. We recognize, with them, “crying eyes and smiling hearts.” As we grieve, our perspectives will shift and realign, often returning to where we started, seeing things anew. This book will be a valuable companion while walking these paths, whether actually during their own first year – or years or even decades later. We commend it, thank Tim Challies and God for it, and expect that as you read (and possibly re-read) it over months and years it will be a true blessing. TAP
This will be Bp Critch’s inaugural sermon as the newly
elected bishop of the Diocese of Mahajanga in St Luke’s
Cathedral in the seaport city of Mahajanga in north-
western Madagascar on December 1st. It will be interpreted from English into Malagasy.
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THE ANGLICAN CHURCH of Canada is about to have a big conversation. The Primate’s Commission’s seven Hypotheses will likely dominate the work of COGS and General Synod (meeting June 23-29 in London, ON).
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FOR TOO LONG, we have danced around the reality of the Anglican Church of Canada’s decline in finances and attendance, with Church House releasing statistics only sporadically, and various leaders offering soothing sermons on how God is doing something special — along the lines of our declining numbers being a picture of the upside-down kingdom.
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THE VEN. Darrell Critch, a priest of the Anglican Church in North America (ACNA), was elected August 24 as Bishop of Mahajanga, Madagascar, a diocese of the Church in the Province of the Indian Ocean. Critch’s new diocese is part of an Anglican church in communion with the See of Canterbury, unlike the ACNA. This will likely make his ministry the first of its kind amid deep division across the Communion.
Now there is a fine annotated edition of this war memoir from priest and historian Dr. Ross Hebb, a fellow Maritimer, and the author of A Canadian Nurse in the Great War.
EVERYONE experiences grief. We have grieved the deaths of friends and family, including our only son, Sean, who died at the age of eleven. For Canadian Tim Challies, a Christian pastor, author and blogger, the sudden death of his son, Nick, on a playing field at the age of twenty, led him to process his grief by keeping a journal of reflections published as Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God.
In July 2023, Fr. Nathan Humphrey, rector of St Thomas’s in Toronto, was pleased to announce the appointment of Manuel or “Manny” Giovanni Piazza as Assistant Organist and Choirmaster. He had studied under John Tuttle, the Organist Emeritus at St Thomas’s.
The single largest initiative launched in the parish in 2023 was the St. Thomas’s Choristers program. Children ages seven to 17 (in grades two to twelve) rehearse every Thursday and sing at the 9:30 a.m. Sunday Low Mass. The young choristers bring in family members, which swells the congregation somewhat. Currently there are about 60 people in attendance at the 9:30 a.m. B.A.S. service.
Sue Careless spoke with Manuel Piazza about the St Thomas’s Choristers.
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