The Dissonance of Death
One of the most painful and powerful moments of this past year occurred the day we buried our daughter Christiana. The jagged dissonance was palpable as we placed our beautiful newborn child in the cold November ground. We tried to sing along to How Firm a Foundation as the Air Force Academy funeral bells solemnly played, but the tempo was quite slow (understatement of the century). We haltingly struggled to keep in sync with one another, never mind those bells that took forever and a day to finish. I remember thinking to myself, “this is all so wrong,” as everyone and everything around me felt and sounded out of sync. If you have ever buried someone close to you, maybe a child or young relative, you certainly know that awful feeling, that gut-wrenching, sickening knowledge deep within, that things are not as they should be.
Pain, sin, and death surround us in our fallen world, and you don’t have to walk very far before encountering those realities.
Yet, death is a threshold through which we all must walk. Death is not the end but the beginning. Each of us will step through that doorway into eternity future. The darkness that envelops us as we walk through painful encounters with death is amazingly juxtaposed with the glorious truth of what the Bible says: that those who have trusted in Jesus Christ’s substitutionary death on their behalf are graciously welcomed into the presence of God.
In the shadowy haze of grief, this magnificent truth became so much more real and more dear to me. Jesus, because of His death and resurrection, has crushed the power of death. What a Savior!
This truth, that we as undeserving sinners can be declared righteous by faith was an anchor for my soul in these dark times.
In addition to this profound life – and death – altering truth, there are three more anchors for our souls that I want to share with you today.
First, God is sovereign.
Second, God is good.
Third, God is with us in our deepest valleys of grief.
C.S. Lewis once said, “We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Isn’t that so true? The “why” of our suffering and losing our precious Christiana is far beyond my understanding, but this season has solidified my faith in the Lord. I carry with me a deep and settled knowledge of His sovereignty and goodness, even in the midst of this pain.
Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon on Matthew 20:15, said: “There is no attribute more comforting to His children than that of God’s Sovereignty. Under the most adverse circumstances, in the most severe trials, they believe
that Sovereignty has ordained their afflictions,
that Sovereignty overrules them,
and that Sovereignty will sanctify them all.
Psalm 115:3 says, “But our God is in the heavens, He has done whatsoever He has pleased.” I am so grateful for the beauty in this truth – not only can we rest in God’s sovereignty, we can rejoice in the fact that He is also working all things for our good. The Lord works all things together for good to those who love Him, to those who are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28)
So often, in our grief, despair, uncertainty, loss, and limited understanding, we can’t see how things will work out for good in our lives – especially in the pain and sting of death.
Does Scripture tell us that everything will work out in the end, in this life? No, that is not the truth that the gospel tells us to cling to. It’s so much bigger, and better, than that. The “good” is spelled out just a few verses after Romans 8:28 tells us what that good is: that we would become more and more like Christ as He prepares us for Heaven. In fact, Jesus clearly tells us to expect suffering and heartache in John 16:33: “In this world, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
Someone once said, you don’t ever “get over” the loss of someone, you just continue to “move through” it. There has been much sadness, dissonance, and grief, especially during the months of waiting and the many unknowns that surrounded Christiana’s life. Even after we buried our daughter, we continue to long for her presence in our lives. We are in the “already” but “not yet” -- we have faith in God’s goodness, though we may not see the reason or the outcome. In Genesis 50:20, Joseph says “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.” Even after years of enslavement, imprisonment, false accusations, and exile, Joseph recognized that God had used the evil circumstances around him to keep His chosen nation of Israel alive in the midst of a worldwide famine. What a faith in God’s sovereignty and goodness that Joseph displayed!
Not only has Jesus overcome the world, but He is also making all things new! Your path in life may look very different than mine. Yet each one of us has seen and experienced that things in this life are not as they should be.
We see all around us the discordance between beauty and pain, suffering and death. But this is not the end of the story!
For those who belong to Christ, Revelation 21:3-5 gives us a preview into our eternal home in Heaven: “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’ And He who was seated on the throne said,
‘Behold, I am making all things new.’”
I want to leave you with one last truth. Isaiah 53, written hundreds of years before Christ, prophesied that He would bear our griefs and carry our sorrows. For those who believe and trust in Christ as King, He has carried our every sadness, pain, and trial in His body on the cross. And now He sits at the right hand of God the Father, ever interceding for us in our pain and grief. He will never leave us or forsake us, even in our darkest hour.
We can, with unshakeable confidence, entrust our souls to our Creator, who “for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the Father” (Hebrews 12:2b). Our Father is sovereign, He is good, and He is always with us – even in our deepest pain and grief.
-Nina Willert