#ABetterTing

“When I look at death, I’m just like, ‘Hey, where’s your sting, man?’”

Seets is the only one I know who can paraphrase 1 Corinthians 15:55–57 with so much courage and conviction. See, the Ting about it is (see what I did there), the sting of death have been taken away. Yet for us who miss her so much, it still stings to have to go through it.

Some think of grief like an event. Like it’s something that gets completed and then we’re done with it. One of Seet's closest friends lost his mum at a young age. He describes grief to be more like waves. It comes and goes. And every now and then, you get hit by a strong one. And you feel that pain crashing in again. But in that pain, you remember the one you love too.

This is actually how the Bible describes it too. In Philippians 2, the Apostle Paul had a friend who was sick and facing death. And he describes that kind of pain as sorrow upon sorrow. Waves after wave of pain, grief, agony and sadness that comes crashing in.

“Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.” (Philippians 2:27, NIV)

As Christians, we have the hope of heaven. The Apostle Paul knows his friend will be in heaven just like we know Seets is in heaven. We have hope in that. But here’s what we need to know. Hurting with hope still hurts. Even though we know she’s in heaven, it still hurts like hell on earth. So we’re grieving, we don’t have to be happy about it.

But here’s what gives me comfort. I know Jesus isn’t happy about it too.

I believe the pain that we feel, the kind that death brings, is the same type of pain Jesus felt when his friend Lazarus died. He groaned, he grieved, he wept. He was angry that we needed to deal with death.

But he wasn’t just angry. He was angry enough to do something about it. He went on to abolish, to destroy death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

but has now been revealed by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who has abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, - 2 Timothy 1:10

He did so, by giving us His everything. By dying on the cross and resurrecting from the grave.

So though we grief, we know that we are not alone. He is here in our midst. And as he carried Seets through her darkest days, he will carry us through the valley of the shadow of death too.

“That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.” (2 Timothy 1:12, NIV)

Ps Norman

Adapted from “Through the Eyes of a Lion by Levi Lusko”, a message of hope that have always brought me much comfort in the darkness of tragedy.