Grace Greater than Grief

“And all his sons and all his daughters rose up to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted; and he said, For I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning. Thus his father wept for him.” (Ge 37:35 AV)

God is so good!  He gives us just what we need at the moment we need it.  Jacob is expressing his deep sense of loss at the supposed loss of his favorite son, Joseph.  Note carefully what Jacob assumes to be the end of his grief.  He fully expects his grief to be so severe that is will take his life.  He expects the grief will overwhelm his aging heart and he will pass away because his favorite son has supposedly been slain by wild animals.  The thing is, Jacob lived another twenty plus years.  God still had a plan for him.  God still had a reason for this patriarch to live.  What we need to see is the reality of the grief and the depth of God’s grace.

We are in no way critical of the depths of Jacob’s sense of loss.  I personally have not had to bury a child.  But I have known several who have.  It is a loss beyond words.  Children are supposed to bury their parents.  Not the other way around.  Unless we have gone through something like this, we cannot fully understand the grief one feels at the loss of a child.  So, we are here, recognizing that depth of grief and affirming it to be real and severe.  Even to the point the survivors do not think they can live through it.  It is a serious situation.  One that demands and begs for compassion, understanding, and empathy.  What we can do though, is remind those who are going through such a time, is that God’s grace is sufficient to the moment.

Somehow, some way, God got Jacob through this.  He was able to strengthen Jacob moment by moment, day by day, week by week, month by month, and year by year.  It didn’t come all at once.  It came in proportion to the moment.  You may ask, how does that apply to you?  Have you lost a child?  Have you experienced grief?  Not to that depth, no.  But we have had to say goodbye to each of our children.  Two live in separates states at least a day’s drive away.  The third is a missionary to a foreign field.  There are times when days are very lonely and the future looks very scary.  What my wife and I have realized is not so much that which we have lost, but how blessed we truly are.  There are no regrets.  Our sons are terrific godly men who love the LORD and love their families.  It hurts, but we will survive.  We will endure by the grace of God.  The hurt will get a little easier to bear.  One day, there will be no goodbyes.  We look forward to that day.  Until then, we live by the grace of God.