Tragedy, Grief and Glory

In the past week I saw two very tragic stories in the news. They were stories that were similar in that they were both were Christian families who had suddenly been faced with the death of a child. They were different in the way that each family acted in the aftermath of that death.

One story involved a family in Redding, CA where a two year-old died. This family belong to the Bethel movement and my understanding of the basic response of the family and the church was to pray that God would resurrect the child. They thought that resurrection was not only possible, but likely, based on their particular understanding of the Bible. They prayed for resurrection for about five days before coming to the conclusion that resurrection would not happen. You may have heard about this. I saw a number of articles on this over the period of several days. I'll confess that I do not really understand Bethel theology. Here is a link to one story and if you are interested you can easily find others.

The second story concerned a family whose son died at the age of 15. He was born 10 weeks premature and had serious kidney issues since birth. He also had respiratory illness and 2 years ago had fungal meningitis. You can read his story here. What stood out to me as a I read this story was the trust that this family had in God, trusting so far as to believe that their son lived neither one day too few, nor one day too many. In Psalm 139:16 it says,

"Your eyes saw my unformed substance;

  in your book were written, every one of them,
    the days that were formed for me,
    when as yet there was none of them."

They believed these words and trusted in the God who gave them.

I would be hard put to think of anything more tragic than to lose a child. Since coming to the reservation I have done a number of funerals for children and those deaths hit the families very hard. And I stand at those funerals understanding a bit of what those families are going through, as five years ago we lost a two year-old granddaughter. There was an accident at home and by the time 911 was called it was already too late.

Those deaths are tragic, and we grieve them, as we should. But the Christian does not grieve without hope. Paul writes to the church at Corinth,

"If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied."

His point it that if, as Christians, we are only hoping for the things of this world, we have our sights set far too low. He goes so far as to say we should be pitied, given that we have a glorious Savior and yet only long for the things of earth, and not the fulfillment of the promises of his return, when all things will be set right and we will see him in his full glory.

We are just a few days from Christmas, when Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. His birth is indeed a wonderful thing but it not the high point of the story by any stretch of the imagination. He died, was resurrected, and then ascended to the right hand of the Father.. The high point is yet to come, when he returns in glory.

You may be approaching this Christmas with a heavy heart, having suffered tragic loss this year. Or you may be carrying grief from something that happened many years ago. But tragedy and grief are not the end of the story. The story ends in glory, glory that the Bible promises will be made very real to every person having trust in Jesus. Amen.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.