God cannot take away grief and sorrow but He is with us helping us shoulder it, the Archbishop of Wales told family and friends of four men who died in a mining accident and of a boy who died in a car accident.
In his address yesterday (Nov 25) at the memorial service for the miners who died at the Gleision colliery in September and for five-year-old Harry Patterson, Dr Barry Morgan said God was always on the side of those who were mourning.
Miners Philip Hill, Garry Jenkins, David Powell and Charles Breslin died at the Gleision Colliery in Cilybebyll. The tragedy happened just days after Harry, of nearby Alltwen, died in an accident on his house drive.
The service took place at St Peter’s Church, Pontardawe, and was led by the Bishop of Swansea and Brecon, John Daives.
The Archbishop said, “This world is full of chance and accident and God has let it be so because that is the only sort of world in which freedom, development, responsibility and love can come into being. Accidents and tragedies have not been willed or planned by God but are, on the contrary, for Him also a disaster and a frustration of His purposes.
“If we find what happened at the Gleision Colliery, and what happened to Harry devastating, why should we think God does not? Why is it that we think it the most natural thing in the world for people to be compassionate and show it in tangible ways at times of tragedy, and people in these communities and beyond certainly have, but find it difficult to believe that God’s character is also one of love and compassion? Yet, the only credible image of God to my mind and certainly the God portrayed and embodied in Jesus, is the God who weeps with His world when it weeps, and who is always on the side of those whose hearts are breaking.
“God cannot take away grief and sorrow but He is with us helping us to shoulder it. For all the questions that assail and assault us at such times, we are assured that God is the rock to which we can cling, bemused and beaten, buffeted and battered, bewildered and bereft by the storms of this life.”
