A Grief That Bends Toward Hope

Image by Carolyn Booth from Pixabay

As I write this post, our fellowship is grieving the loss of several loved ones in the past week: three of our people have lost their mothers, a woman has lost her husband weeks before their 65th anniversary, a young man has lost his grandfather. So many of our families are walking in the valley of the shadow of death.

When the Apostle Paul assures us that “we do not grieve as others, who have no hope” (1 Thess 4:13), he doesn’t mean that Christians need not grieve. Some have interpreted Paul to mean that we need not grieve the death of our loved ones. They want to race past the grief to the celebration of the hope we have in Christ. While that hope is real and while our loved ones in Christ really are in a better place, we need to give ourselves permission to grieve our loss. I wrote recently about the proper place for grieving (“Making Room for Lamentation,” April 24, 2025). Jesus Himself grieved outside the tomb of Lazarus, even though He knew his friend would soon breathe again.

But Christian grief is different because the grief we experience bends toward hope.
 
I had seen death in the loss of pets as a child and in the loss of my grandparents as a young adult, but the first time I saw death up close was when my wife’s father died. Our family was gathered around his bed as he breathed his last. While we were gathered that day, knowing that he was dying, I struggled to say something comforting, but I couldn’t because every time I tried to speak, I broke into sobs. I realized that as deep as my own grief was at the thought of his passing, my greater sorrow was for the grief I saw in the faces of my loved ones – my wife, her mother, our children, the whole clan who would never again see in this life the man who was Daddy, beloved husband, Grampa.

When we experience bereavement, we are experiencing some of the worst that a broken world can do to us. In the death of a loved one, we are confronted with a particular form of suffering: the departure of the spirit from the body of someone we love. The flesh is still there, but the person is gone. We grieve the fact that we must reconstitute a new “normal” that doesn’t include the presence of our beloved.

It is not just the bereaved but all of us who live in the valley of the shadow of death. In the death of a loved one, we are reminded of James’ observation about our mortality: “What is your life? It is a vapor that appears for a little while, then vanishes away” (James 4:14). We might try to avoid thinking about it, but death will come for all of us. So we all live with the prospect of grief hanging over our heads.

But those who have put their trust in the risen Savior experience that grief differently. Because Jesus has broken the vicious power of sin and death, our grief is saturated with the bright hope of the life to come; we know that in Christ our sorrow has an expiration date. We have a hope-suffused perspective on death and dying.

And this is why we can grieve differently.
 
If it were not for Jesus, this separation from our loved ones would be an ultimate loss. But because we follow a God who knows His way out of the grave, the separation we experience in death is not final. Because we serve a risen Savior, most of our time with our loved ones in Christ is in our future.

This makes an enormous difference for believers who are grieving, but what about the rest of us muddling through our ordinary lives? This ultimate hope is not just for the next life but also for this one. This hope means we can persevere.

At the end of his glorious discussion of the promise of the resurrection of God’s people, Paul writes this lovely exhortation: “Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain” (1 Cor 15:58).

So, brothers and sisters, persevere in that sure hope.

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship