(by Lorie Codispoti)
Over the last few years we’ve lost some very close friends to death. It’s been difficult to walk through the pain of losing people you love. In retrospect, you wish you’d of spent more time together, having more conversations, laughing until you can’t breathe, and taking more pictures to record the memorable moments. The older I get the more death feels like a thief attached to a clock whose minute and hour hands are moving like the second hand and there’s nothing I can do to slow it down.
I’ve tasted a little bit of something my grandmother told me years ago. She said that aging was not the hardest part of getting old. She said that the hardest part of growing older is outliving those you’ve experienced life with. Attending the funerals of friends and relatives becomes more frequent and this can leave an elderly person with a feeling of abandonment and loneliness, on top of the reality that the world they’ve lived in has changed and they are now a stranger in a foreign land.
While I understand that there is a silver lining for us christian sojourners, and that our eternal home awaits us with unimaginable joy, the journey is still hard. Having the ability to embrace the unbelievable pain of loss, while at the same time fixing our minds on the irrepressible hope that we have in Christ, is a practice to cultivate.
For believers, grief and hope go together. The two are not mutually exclusive. They coexist in the tension between the already and the not yet.
I love the way Bruce Hillman explains this state: “To live in a state of "already but not yet" is the gift of the faith. …we already possess all that Christ possesses, but the fullness of that is not yet experienced. Hold an acorn in your hand, and you have a whole oak tree, hold a handful of acorns, and you hold a forest. The acorn is a promise, a reality that is not yet realized in fullness but still exists in your hand. To hold the Bible, then, is to hold the universe, salvation, the world to come, everlasting life. To hold to the Bible is to hold in your hand the promises that faith grasps.”
In 1Thess. 4:13 we read that christians do “not grieve as others do who have no hope.” And, before that (vs.17-19), the Apostle Paul informs us that if our hope is limited to this life, only, we are to be pitied because our faith is futile.
So, how do I grieve with hope?
First, I don’t deny the pain. Death is a thief that steals from all of us. It hurts to lose a dear friend. I hate it! But, allowing myself to walk through that pain does more than acknowledging that it’s real. It serves as a springboard to the next part of the process: remembering! (Sometimes you have to go back to move forward.) I remind myself of the realities of living in a fallen world, but I also remind myself of the promises that God has given us for the next one. Our citizenship is beyond this world (Phil.3:20). We have a forever home being prepared for us by our Savior Himself (Jn.14:2-7), and an inheritance we’ll never lose (1Pet.1:3-5). Although our physical bodies will deteriorate and die on this side of eternity, Jesus assures us that He will transform them into incorruptible bodies, like His (Phil.3:21).
This is the essence of a faith secured in a hope that extends beyond what we experience.
We live in the tension between what Christ has already done (He came. He died. He rose again.) and the fulfillment of the promises to come. Death is part of that tension. However, the clock is ticking. Grief, for the christian is but a temporary reality.
The thief has already been defeated, and its funeral is close at hand.
If you like a party there’s a big celebration coming (Rev.19:6-9). When Jesus puts the final nail in the coffin of sin and death, and buries this enemy forever, I won't be sitting on the front row, crying. No! I'll be standing and shouting, “Death, your stinger is gone forever! Our God reigns!”
“And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.” (Rev.21:4)
May we live as Jesus lives - in the already, but not yet!
