A GRIEF OBSERVED

My mind is ablaze, as I am currently at a funeral for a young man who passed away too soon. The sights and sounds are all too familiar to my soul—I know them well. It was fourteen years ago--on this very date--that I stood at the funeral of my brother, my mind confounded by his young body resting in a coffin. I can feel the triggers of grief firing through me, as I look around and know the heart’s desolation for so many loved ones in this place. Helpless. Paralyzed. Questioning all things God.

Grief is a powerful emotion that catches us off guard and exposes us to what we know deep down inside--and that is the fragility of our existence. Death is no respecter of persons or status. It is a natural result of the Fall which caused all of us to live in a broken world.

But it is precisely in times like this that our minds are open to those eternal questions of the meaning of life and more importantly the hereafter—eternal life. It is times like these that reveal our desperate need for God. It is the only place where we can seek true peace.

Grief should drive us closer to God, and it can, when we surrender to Him the pain of missing someone and replace it by the presence of the only One who can make sense of our soul’s cry. Without God as the centerpiece, grief is like trying to place a square inside a circle. It will never fit. No matter how hard you try to make it work. You will always feel at a loss.  

Grief is a natural process of the human mind processing the very difficult circumstances of life without a loved one. And being gripped by grief doesn’t mean we lack faith in a sovereign God. But as we move through the grieving process, it helps to be grounded by the strong foundation of Christ and the fact that we are temporary citizens of this world. And in that acute awareness, we should be evermore satisfied by God's faithfulness and the promise of eternal life.

I am thankful to know where my brother resides (and where this young man, Greg Anthony now resides)—they are not dead, just absent from this current world and we will see them again. How do I know this? Well, those who claim Christ in this life will be claimed by Christ in the afterlife.

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