For many, grief brings despair, anger, or fear. Yet, my father’s passing hasn’t stirred those emotions in me. He lived his life with nothing left unsaid or undone. My four brothers, sister, and mother—his wife of 66 years—feel the same. We didn’t face his death with regret or unfinished business. We shared the rare gift of a complete relationship without the “what-ifs” or “if-onlys.”

After four decades as a caregiver, I thought I understood grief. I’ve watched my wife, Gracie, battle relentless pain and loss since her devastating car accident in 1983—a crash that led to more than 80 operations, multiple amputations, and a struggle with chronic pain that would crush most people. I’ve grieved alongside her in stages, mourning the parts of her health and life that slipped away over time. Some call it incremental and continual grief.
But standing beside my father’s casket, I encountered something new—a grief that cuts to the bone and leaves a void, like a door slammed shut. This wasn’t the slow, grinding sorrow of caregiving, where you brace yourself daily for another blow. And even though not unexpected, it was swift and final—a full-stop in the story of a man who shaped me.
My father and I shared a bond built on respect, love, and a mutual commitment to our Christian faith. His unwavering support and wise counsel were anchors in my life, especially during the most challenging caregiving moments. When I was lost in the wilderness of Gracie’s suffering, his words guided me back to solid ground.
For many, grief brings despair, anger, or fear. Yet, my father’s passing hasn’t stirred those emotions in me. He lived his life with nothing left unsaid or undone. My four brothers, sister, and mother—his wife of 66 years—feel the same. We didn’t face his death with regret or unfinished business. We shared the rare gift of a complete relationship without the “what-ifs” or “if-onlys.”
Caregivers know the unique pain of “anticipatory grief”—mourning the losses you see coming while still wrestling with the ones at hand. I’ve lived in that space for decades, grieving bit by bit as I watched Gracie’s body and spirit endure the unimaginable. That kind of grief is a slow bleed, exhausting even the strongest spirit. But this grief for my father is different—blunt, piercing, and conclusive. I am no longer waiting for the inevitable but living in its aftermath.
As I sit with these feelings, I’m struck by how my sorrow is softened by the lessons my father imparted throughout his life. One such lesson came unexpectedly when I was asked to speak at the Huntington’s Disease Society of America (HDSA) conference some years ago. Huntington’s is a devastating genetic disease that haunted my father’s family for generations. It was a heavy legacy, and knowing this weighed on me as I accepted the invitation.
I arrived the evening before and met many wonderful people at a meet-and-greet. I listened to their stories and felt the weight of their suffering. Even though I’m no stranger to harsh realities, the depth of their pain overwhelmed me. Later that night, as I sat in my hotel room, mentally rehearsing my keynote address, I called my father and confessed, “Dad, I don’t feel worthy to talk with these people.”
He didn’t hesitate. “You have been uniquely prepared and equipped by God to minister to these people and more—and there’s no one in line behind you to do it. Now get down there and do your job!” His voice, honed by decades as a pastor and Navy Chaplain, was steady and unyielding. My only response was, “Yes, Sir!”
The next day, I spoke with passion and conviction, knowing I was fulfilling my father’s commission. I’d seen him walk into the most horrific circumstances with the confidence of the Gospel and the authority of God’s Word. With his words echoing in my ears, I felt his hand on my shoulder as I stepped into that same role.
As I navigate this different kind of grief, I find solace in reflecting on the countless lessons my father imparted—in both word and deed. His life was a gift, not just to me but to so many others. My gratitude tempers the sting of loss. Though the tears come, they are mixed with joy for a life well lived and a race well run.
Many people experience grief tangled up with unresolved issues. My father had a difficult relationship with his own father, and his life was marked by sadness over “what could have been.” Yet, he allowed that sorrow to be transformed by God’s grace. He became a father to not only his six children but to our spouses, cousins, and a host of others who found refuge at our home.
As I wrestle with this different kind of grief, I am determined to let it be shaped by God’s provision, principles, and purpose. The loss of a father is a unique, incalculable pain. Sometimes, that loss comes from abandonment—but death comes for us all, even the most loving of fathers.
Since my father’s charge to take the stage at that conference, I’ve spoken to tens of thousands of fellow caregivers who struggle with the same kind of incremental grief and heartache I’ve carried. Now, while shouldering this different kind of grief, I find new resonance in the scriptures that describe Jesus as “…a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).
Reflecting on my father’s legacy of ministry to broken lives, I am reminded of his favorite hymn:
“There is a balm in Gilead, to make the wounded whole.There is a balm in Gilead, to heal the sin-sick soul.”
My grief—a different kind of grief—is real and will last a lifetime until I am reunited with my father in Heaven. But I know what he would want me to do now: allow God to turn this grief into a balm for others. So, when my head hangs in sorrow, I still hear his voice echoing in my heart:
“Get out there and do your job.”
Peter Rosenberger hosts the nationally syndicated radio program, Hope for the Caregiver. His newest book is A Minute for Caregivers—When Every Day Feels Like Monday. www.HopeforTheCaregiver.com

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Like the generation whose dead bodies lined the wilderness floor, the generation who killed God’s Son would be shut out of God’s New Covenant kingdom and would pay mightily for their crimes. That is the context we must understand if we are going to understand Matthew 24, which is one of the most misunderstood chapters in all of the Bible.

The Confusing of Curses
As a child who grew up on Disney, I learned that curses came from magic spells, brought to boil in a big black cauldron, were wielded by wicked witches in shadowy towers, and cast upon unsuspecting innocents. These evil potions turned princes into frogs and princesses into ogres, that would be locked away in castles. But, should a hero arise, discovering the magical power of eroticism, and other such things that will make you gag, then the curse would be broken by the power of love and all would turn out right again.
Perhaps nonsense like this is why I had so much trouble understanding curses in the Bible and why God was the one putting people under them.
I was never told that God invented blessings and curses as a feature of covenantal relationships and not as a weapon against the innocent. You see, a covenant is a terms-based relationship between God and man. It is a relationship where a holy God makes promises to dwell with a sinful people. To do that, laws must be instituted to limit human sin and sacrifices must be given to atone for that sin. Without that there would be no relationship.
Then, once the relationship has been codified, God gives a sign to the people to remember their commitment to God and His commitment to them. For those who obey God’s covenant, great blessings and favor end up coming upon the people. The greatest and best blessing of course is being near to and knowing God. But, for all those who hate God, spurn His commands, and live in opposition to His covenant, God would rain down curses upon them.
In the Bible, curses do not come from the hand of a malevolent tyrant but a merciful God. They are not applied to good people who need to be rescued, but to deplorable people who must be destroyed. And the way these curses are avoided is not through the triumph of a love-sick, dragon-slaying, hero but by the loving obedience of the dragon-slaying LORD.
By the time we get to Matthew 23, the people have hated God so ferociously and lived in opposition to His covenant for so long, that the cup of His bitter curses was about to tip and drown them in His suffocating wrath.
The Need for Curse
God was gracious to outline all of the stipulations, laws, and requirements in the Mosaic covenant. He gave them explicit and specific commands to obey, feasts to attend, and sacrifices to offer whenever they sinned. He gave them priests to represent them before God and to mediate reconciliation on their behalf. The point of the law was not perfect obedience lest a lightning bolt will be slammed on top of your head. The covenant was a relationship of grace with a thousand mercies for sinners to be reconciled to God. Only those with the hardest of hearts toward God would experience the curses laid out in chapters like Deuteronomy 28.
In that passage, God warns the ones who persist in covenant rebellion, that they will be brought under a total and unrelenting curse (Dt. 28:14). This curse would impact their food supply, it would poison their produce, and would kill all the livestock in their possession. It would cause the nation to be plunged into insanity, confusion, and chaos. It would doom their children, infect their citizens with incurable illnesses and diseases, rain down plagues upon the population, and leave their soldiers dead and roasting in the sun.
If the people did not repent after the first round of seven curses, an additional seven curses would be poured out onto the people with terrifying and increasing intensity. This would culminate in a bitter exile where the people would be violently removed from their ancestral lands and mistreated in a place that was not their home. If they still did not repent, even after all of that, a terrifying nation would overwhelm them, besieging them in their cities, cutting off their food supply, raping and killing them, leaving them so hungry for food that they would willingly roast their children in the fire (Dt 28:15-68). As revolting as all of this sounds, this was precisely the kind of disasters that befell Judah during the Roman invasions of AD 70.
In Malachi-like fashion, Jesus came to Jerusalem to forecast their destruction. The culmination of all of God’s covenantal fury was soon to descend upon them, destroying the root and branch of Jesse through covenantal cursing. In Matthew 21-22, Jesus came into the city with the prophetic fire (Mal. 4:1-2) but the people refused to repent. Now, in Matthew 23, His righteous indignation is boiling over and the hard-hearted people will be left to their demise.
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Written by Rachel M. Coleman |
Tuesday, February 20, 2024
Because women are the only members of the human species that bear children—that is to say, because women bear in themselves the future of humanity—if there is an attempt to change, foundationally and fundamentally, what it means to be human, the attempt will manifest first and most visibly in women. Byrne writes that “what is a woman?” is “the main question” of TWG’s third chapter, and as anyone who pays attention to this discourse knows, that question may be the most volatile question to ask in our current moment. Why doesn’t it occur to Byrne to ask why the definition of “woman” is in contention rather than “man?” Kellie-Jay Keen knows why, as well as the radical feminist philosophers I mentioned above: because the very fabric of who and what we are is at stake.

It is not an overstatement to say that the question of sexual difference, and its counter-concept, gender, is among the most contentiously debated today. We should think about why the topic inspires such vitriol, but one possible reason is that everyone has skin in the game: to be human is to be either a man or a woman, and therefore, being human requires us to think about what it means to be a man or a woman. Every bit of ourselves is expressed either as male or female, and therefore, the questions surrounding sexual difference touch on—or perhaps coincide with—questions of our humanity.
One of the consequences of this, however, has been an absolute morass of once unquestioned terms. On the face of it, this seems silly: there are men and there are women, and we all bring something different to the table when it comes to being human. It shouldn’t be that complicated.
And yet those who pay even the least attention to this discourse (and even perhaps those who wish to pay no attention) know that it is complicated. Part of the reason is that sexual difference is more nuanced than we have previously thought it to be, but another part—probably the larger part—is that the terms of the discourse are intentionally confused and obfuscated by gender ideologues (those who contend that gender is different from sex). Gender ideologues want us to think that sex and gender are much more complicated than most of us can understand, and that the evidence we collect from the world with our own senses (as well as that of the billions of humans who preceded us in history) is not reliable.
Alex Byrne’s Trouble With Gender: Sex Facts, Gender Fictions (TWG) is a mostly successful attempt to cut through the intentional discomposition of the terms of discourse about sexual difference. In an extremely well-researched manner, Byrne addresses many of the “fictions” gender ideologues use to make their arguments. One example: many note that 1.7 percent of the population is intersex, which would mean one out of almost every fifty people have some combination of both male and female genitalia. As Byrne demonstrates in chapter three, that number was made up by Anne Fausto-Sterling in her article “How sexually dimorphic are we?” and that the number is probably 0.015 percent. Such research and clarification alone make the book worth reading.
As Byrne himself writes in both the Introduction and Coda, TWG is a book about sex—not sexual intercourse, but human beings as sexually differentiated creatures. Byrne’s thesis is that “using ‘gender’ to mean anything other than sex is to obscure important issues for no good reason.” In making his argument, Byrne provides a great deal of evidence from biology, history, sociology, and psychology. He carefully sifts through a great deal of nonsense that passes for research in the fairly new subject of “gender studies,” exposing the gender ideologues’ faulty logic. 
On this score, Judith Butler is Byrne’s main target: the title of the book is clearly aimed at Butler’s Gender Trouble, first published in 1990 and largely understood to be a foundational text for gender studies. There, Butler expands on Simone de Beauvoir’s famous proclamation from The Second Sex that “one is not born, but rather becomes, a woman,” and concludes that sex and gender are both socially constructed. Byrne criticizes Butler mostly on grounds of how unclear her writing is rather than any full examination of her first principles. Lack of clarity and precision seem, for Byrne, to be the deepest sin a thinker can commit.
Byrne explores cases of individuals to whom gender ideologues often point to demonstrate that “sex is a vast, infinitely malleable continuum.” These are generally people who have some sort of chromosomal or hormonal abnormality that leads to their being not immediately identifiable as their natal sex, and are thus raised by their parents as the opposite sex (the author makes it clear early in the book that such abnormalities do not result in a “disordered person: indeed, he or she may be the most wonderful human being you could ever hope to meet”).
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