Hope in Times of Loss

Well, we sure did start the year off on the “left foot” (See last month’s article). We started well, and we’re continuing well, but it is a challenge, isn’t it? We began the year with communion and the wonderful fellowship of our small groups, but it wasn’t long before we had to say goodbye to Peggy Miller, Mary Plum Hogge, Karen McNeil, and shortly after that, I had to say goodbye to my own mother, Connie. After losing my father four years ago and helping people grieve for over 28 years as a pastor, you’d think it would be relatively easy – but grief never is easy.

I have no doubts that I’ll see her again, see her in all the glory with which she was created, but these eyes will have to close and this life will have to end before that day comes. Meanwhile, as many of you have reminded me through your own losses, grief is like a wave that never ends, though it ebbs and flows.

I am heartened, though, by all the ways in which we bless each other and our community. It is touching to see how much care Martha’s Ministry takes of families, how much tenderness our little Resurrection Hope group gives to them, how much time and expertise our A/V team donates, and how much we are blessed with musicians, ushers, and people who will jump in a moment’s notice to support people in their grief. I am reminded how one of the ways the early church stood out was by doing grief differently than the Romans and Greeks. While the Romans and Greeks had no hope of an afterlife, no assurance of resurrection, the early church surprised people by not only grieving their loved ones, but also celebrating their lives, both the one they exited, and the one they would enter. We grieve, but not as those who have no hope, as Paul wrote many years ago:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18)

My first church, Ross Harbour, in the mountains of Patrick County, has a cemetery on the property, and nearly everyone had reserved a spot in it. I used to enjoy how they would talk about who was going to be resurrected first. Some said they were higher in elevation, so they’d go first. Others said they were going to be the farthest east, so they’d be first. We all knew it was joking around, but it gave me joy to know that they had no doubts that this life is a prelude to the next – an all-important prelude, but still, not the entirety of life. May we always, whether we joke around, grieve, play, serve, or rest, remember that the best is yet to come. The God who brought us here is not done with us, for the One “who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6).