Before Easter, before the good news of the resurrection, Jesus had a very difficult job to do. First he asked His Father for a break. He requested, he begged, he prayed and sweated and asked that the Father wouldn’t require the Son to do the job set out for Him. He asked in the most urgent terms that “this cup might pass from him.”  

It may be true that you prayed as urgently that your child might not die. You could have requested healing, begged for life, prayed and sweated and cried that your child might live and not die. If your child was sick and declining, you had time for these prayers. If you received an emergency phone call in the middle of the night, you still may have prayed “NO! NO! Please NO!” It is the same urgent prayer.

Does it help you to know the Jesus has been through the same experience that you have been through? It helps me. It reinforces the thought that He knows my human experience of life in this fallen world. When I pray now, He knows what it’s like.  He knows the urgency. He knows the pain and sorrow of facing a great loss or a great threat to life. He knows the pain of not being able to reconcile our knowledge of God’s goodness with events. He knows.

The thing that Jesus did, that’s so hard for any human, is he yielded. He yielded to God’s purpose even though it would hurt physically, emotionally, and spiritually. A Wayne Watson song, “Home Free,” expresses this very well:

…Good people underneath the sea of grief
Some get up and walk away
Some will find ultimate relief

Out in the corridors we pray for life
A mother for her baby, A husband for his wife
 …And while we pray for one more heartbeat
The real comfort is with you

You know pain has little mercy
And suffering’s no respecter of age, of race or position
I know every prayer gets answered
But the hardest one to pray is slow to come
Oh Lord, not mine, but Your will be done

Let it be…  Home Free, eventually
At the ultimate healing we will be Home Free

 Not my will, but yours is a very hard prayer to pray, even for Jesus, the One in whom all the fullness of God dwells, who is also the Son of Man. He’s like us, and it was difficult for Him. We are like Him in his humanity and it’s very hard for a parent to pray “not my will, but thine.” In another place in scripture, it says Jesus came to this conclusion: “…for the joy set before him, He endured the cross.” The writer then refers to heaven, the throne room where everything is set right and there is no more pain or sorrow. Then he says to us as humans living after the cross and resurrection, “Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.” If you can focus on Jesus, who focused on the greater joy after the cross, in heaven, you can endure your own grief and loss and “not grow weary or lose heart.”  

I could go on, but it’s best if I stop talking. There is so much more that could be said about Jesus and hope. He is not only our role model in right living, of being a child of God and of enduring hard things. He is our source of Comfort since He promised to send the Comforter after His resurrection. He is our source of strength since His spirit is in us who believe. But I’ll save other ideas for another time. For now, focus on Jesus who focused of the biggest and best plans of His own heavenly Father, and yours, and endured.(Scriptural references used for these thoughts include: Matt 26:39, Col 1:15-19, Heb 12:2-3.)

Blessings to you in His grace.

Let’s look for some comfort for grieving people in some of the scenes of the last few days of Jesus’ life. Let’s look at Him as He prayed in the garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14:32-41; Matt 26:36-46; Luke 22:39-46). He went to pray because He was deeply distressed and overwhelmed with sorrow. He asked for the support of friends – to watch with Him, to pray with and for Him. They disappointed Him. Could that describe you in your grief – overwhelmed, asking for support and disappointed? If you spent any time in the hospital with your child it probably does describe you, at least some of the time. If your child died suddenly, maybe this wasn’t your experience before he or she died. But maybe it has been your experience since his death.

Jesus’ friends couldn’t stay with the task of support and prayer, even though they loved Him very much. They just couldn’t pray earnestly and long enough.  You may have asked for different kinds of help during the final illness of your child or since his death. Your friends may have left before you even got to this point of need. But if they stayed in your life, they may have actually wanted to help, but somehow they disappointed you. Perhaps from exhaustion, perhaps from pain – their own as they faced the death of your child, or pain from seeing your pain – they couldn’t endure. Just like Jesus’ friends.

Perhaps they counseled you to pray a certain way or to see a different doctor or to take a certain herb or other ill-considered advice that just didn’t help at the time. Jesus’ friend, Peter, also gave Him some bad advice at this time (attack the soldiers with swords). They may have fallen asleep literally or figuratively. They may have just faded away or stopped calling you to find out the latest. Jesus was disappointed that they couldn’t stay awake and pray. The second time, he acknowledged that they were tired. The third time, He just told them it’s all over, it’s time and confronted the betrayers. Jesus realized He had to face His future alone. The friends couldn’t take it away or change the path the Father laid before Him. Your friends too, may have the best of intentions, but just can’t stay with you long enough. Nor were they able to change the course of your child’s illness or life.

Unlike Jesus, there are other helps you can find.

• BASIS or another support group. (In a later blog I’ll share why I believe in the gathering together of people who have lost a child and what they can do together for each other.)
• A Bible study that focuses on the presence of God or on what it means to suffer in this fallen world.
• Certain books or websites on grief.
• Others who have walked this road before you. Your hope can be boosted just by seeing that someone else has survived their loss! 

Like Jesus, even though your friends disappoint you, you do have the Father who is always present, listening to your heart’s deepest groaning. Since there are so many similarities between your experience and His, you can know that Jesus knows what it’s like to go through this valley of the shadow of death. He understands the disappointment friends can inflict on your hurting heart. Jesus knows and cares. So do I.   

In the next couple of blogs, we will seek more comfort from the Easter passages of Scripture.

Job said he wanted to die (job 3); he wished he never was born (job 7: 6-9,13-16) and that he despised his life.  

CS Lewis said:  “ ..where is God? ….go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. ..Why is He… so very absent in time of trouble?

“… He reminded me the same thing happened to Christ: “Why hast thou forsaken me?” [But] Does that make it easier to understand?

“Not that I am… in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not “So there’s no God after all,” but “So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.” (Chapter 1 in A Grief Observed)

Jesus said:”My god, why have you forsaken me?”

The loss of a child creates a spiritual crossroads. Those who have believed are asking whether there is a God. And if so, what kind of God can He be. Unbelievers are asking questions too.

I knew a mother who did not believe in life after death. But she loved hearing me talk about the Life Jesus has prepared for us in His house beyond the grave. She wanted to believe. After the death of her daughter, she felt drawn to that hope.  She saw various little evidences of that life that she took to be messages from her daughter. But, I’m sorry to report, she never took Jesus into her life which is how we find our way to that real hope of the home He is preparing for His children.

For those of us who believe what the Scriptures say – that God is good, wise and powerful – may have a very hard time bringing those truths into some correlation to other truths in our lives. It may seem impossible that those things are true and also that your loved child has died.

Job’s process was to ask his questions – loud and long. He kept asking. And, I note, God listened and did not strike him with lightening! Asking your genuine questions to the Father is not going to make you unacceptable to Him. On the other hand, if you have questions but don’t put them before the Father, if you start talking behind His back, so to speak, or complaining to others about Him, that may not be so good for you. Job rants on for chapters. His so-called friends give him all sorts of bad interpretations of what God does and why. Job somehow is not encouraged by their well intentioned but bad theology! Eventually, and I believe it is perfect timing, God steps up and has finished listening. Now He begins teaching. He shares His own heart in this matter of Job’s life. For once, Job listens. Then Job is humbled. Job realizes the proper arrangement between him and the Father. And finally, Job says, “My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you” (Job 42:5). Wow, Job gets to know God, the Father, much better and more intimately than before.  

Jesus’ “process” was to come to the point where He said, “not my will but thine.” There is trust! Jesus decided that though He asked to be relieved of the cross, He accepted the Father’s decision to have Him go through with it all the way to death. He yielded to the Father’s choice and decision, no matter what.

Grief is a spiritual crossroads for each of us. Jesus humbled Himself and accepted His Father’s will for him. Job expressed his genuine questions and came much closer to God. C.S. Lewis also continued to draw near His heavenly Father. My friend did not. What about you? Are you leaning into Him, questions and all? Or are you turning away from Him because He seems far away. That locked door Lewis pictured, that distance you picture, are illusions. He IS with you, listening and waiting for the right time to show Himself to you in love and comfort. Keep asking. Keep knocking. The Lord in near. He has promised.