HOW can a person say “It is well” after a tragedy or a deeply painful loss, as Jefrinces kept on saying to herself after her experience of losing Kahel, their only child?
How can Horatio Spafford write after losing 4 young children at the same time, “It is well with my soul”?
In reality, pain and grief do come in waves and during times when a memory is triggered. These cannot be pushed down nor denied or else suffer more.
Losing anyone so close to one’s heart is like losing a part of you that you know will never be back in this lifetime.
But what makes some people cope better and eventually bounce back faster? I think the word is HOPE.
“Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who hope in the Lord” (Psalm 37:24). Hope is not wishful thinking, or hoping-against-hope and cross-your-fingers feeling. Biblical hope is neither religious fanaticism nor baseless belief.
Rather, people who believe the truth and by experience know that God is good and does good, have hope that is a certainty, even in the throes of loss!
Henry Spafford wrote:
“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control
that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed His own blood for my soul.”
Ahh. maybe that holds the secret! To have tasted the grace of One who has suffered rejection, untold suffering, injustice, and death in our place, yet was silent through it all. “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, and our sorrows He carried” (Isa. 53:4). We have a personal God who comforts us, enables us to bear the pain, grows us through what we suffer, and assures us that He has overcome death.
When Jesus rose from the dead and witnessed by so many people, it changed the fearful, doubting followers who saw him die on the cross. They began to understand what Jesus was saying all along. And turned their world and countless people upside down with the hope and assurance that this life is not all there is to it. The best is yet to come for those who trust and hope in God.
A letter supposedly from a child that has passed on to heaven ministered to Jefrinces and Ryan that put things in perspective. The excerpt says:
Dear Mom and Dad, I am sorry that I am not with you today. God called me home early, and though there has been mourning, His plans has actually been a blessing for us all. God has spared me from the trials and frustrations of life on earth.
While I am in a building, a home not made with hands, eternal in the heavens, you all remain in a tent. The apostle Paul is here, and he told me that you are naked, but I am clothed; you are visiting but I am home; you are decaying, but I am whole (2 Cor. 5). . .
Please do not be concerned that my time was too short, that I missed out. Your life, when compared with eternity, is short too. When I asked God how long, He compared the length of your days to the distance from my little finger to my thumb.
As I look at my tiny hand, that is not too long. I thought I missed something, but God says lifetime is as nothing in His sight (Ps. 39:4-5). . . Until He comes for You, Your Little One
1 Thess. 4:13 says, “Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope!
