Grieving with Hope
The Apostle Paul speaks well of grief in his first letter to the Thessalonians (and I like scholar N.T. Wright’s version, The New Testament for Everyone, the most) when he says, “Now concerning those who have fallen asleep: we don’t want you to remain in ignorance about them, my dear family. We don’t want you to have the kind of grief that other people do, people who don’t have any hope. For, you see, if we believe that Jesus died and rose, that’s the way God will also, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep. Let me explain (this is the word of the Lord I’m speaking to you!). We who are alive, who remain until the Lord is present, will not find ourselves ahead of those who fell asleep. The Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shouted order, with the voice of an archangel and the sound of God’s trumpet. The Messiah’s dead will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, will be snatched up with them among the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. And in this way we shall always be with the Lord. So comfort each other with these words.”
I read a book a few years ago by the British writer Max Porter titled “Grief is a Thing with Feathers.” In it, a father, who is a scholar writing a book about poet Ted Hughes, and his two young sons live in a London apartment after the sudden, accidental death of the mother and wife. There is a strange, human-sized crow that visits them in the depths of their despair, who talks and is part trickster, part therapist, part protector, and part babysitter. The book balances dark, angular wit with devastating sadness, but portrays grief not as a quiet process, but as something more chaotic and physical. And not quick to fix, either.
The book’s title is a play on the words of the famous American poet Emily Dickinson's poem “Hope is a Thing with Feathers.” The interchange of the words “grief” and “hope” fascinates me. Two seemingly opposite experiences share the same imagery. One speaks of the possibility of hope; the other of the unavoidable weight of loss.
On some level, everyone is in a stage of grieving something. We grieve loved ones who have “fallen asleep” before us. As of this moment, I’m grieving with my family over the loss of my brother-in-law Ben. But we also grieve so many other things. The loss of living people, like friendships, or family members who have walked away from us because of theological or even political beliefs. We grieve time lost, like moments in our past that were so much better than right now. We grieve over the memory of when our children were little, and we still had to tie their shoes. And also, as of right now, many of us might be grieving these past midterm elections. Really, there are no limits to the things that we grieve.
“But,” Paul reminds us, “if we believe that Jesus died and rose, that’s the way God will also, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”
I do not think Paul is saying here, don’t worry about all of this – ignore your pain. In the context of the way the Scriptures speak about death and grief, we are to hold grief and hope together, allowing neither to diminish the reality of the other. Hope does not in any way eliminate grief, because grief is actually an expression of love, and hope gives us permission to continue loving even after loss. And the Christian hope doesn’t mean we grieve less; it just means we grieve differently.
Like Paul said, “Let me explain:”
Grief is not a sequence of neat stages. Whether we realize it or not, we commonly quote the “Five Stages of Grief,” which was introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. We’ll often say that stage 1 is denial. Stage 2 is anger, working through bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But it isn’t said enough that Kübler-Ross believed that mourning doesn’t follow a tidy checklist. Porter’s book has a fragmented structure showing that loss is messy, confusing, and constantly shifting between deep sadness, dark humor, and domestic routine. Grief is non-linear, and not a strict, step-by-step sequence. People frequently experience them out of order, jumping back and forth, and even going through multiple stages at the same time. If grief is a thing with feathers, it flies all over the place. Of course we’ll experience great loss of a loved one at a holiday or a birthday, but even more often, we’ll just be driving to work, coffee in one hand, and it’ll just be there and we’ll suddenly and without warning, we’ll break down. No rhyme or reason.
Grieving requires active engagement. One thing we don’t talk about enough when we are grieving is biblical lamenting. Grieving is working through the deep emotional pain of loss, and lamenting is taking that grief in an honest, prayerful expression, directly to God. Prophets like Jeremiah lamented the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. King Jehoshaphat leads the entire nation of Judah in a corporate lament when facing a massive invading army. Job bitterly questions God about his own existence and suffering after losing his family and health. Jesus wept outside the tomb of His friend Lazarus, sharing directly in human grief and loss. And even more so, Jesus, in Gethsemane, cried out in agonizing emotional distress before his crucifixion. Over a third to nearly half of the Psalms are a masterclass of how to sing and pray while lamenting. You cannot read Psalm 88 and wonder who the writer is upset with. Some of the other psalms end with something like: “…but you are still God…” Not this one. It never lets up: “…Your fierce wrath has gone over me; Your terrors have cut me off…”
Part of lament is permitting ourselves to be angry with God. To question Him and to tell Him we’re disappointed. To acknowledge that something isn't fair. We have plenty of Christian language about trusting God, but considerably less about bringing our anguish to God.
Yet, He’s God. He can more than handle it. In fact, God even says something like: “Go ahead. Throw your worst. Throw your rocks at me. I'm not threatened by them. I love you,” when we’re told, “Cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).
This is the active engagement that people of faith must have. He never said the suffering or the pain would be removed. But He did say He’d always be with us in it.
Healing means integration, not forgetting. Porter’s novel doesn’t end with the family “getting over” the mother’s death. Instead, it concludes when the Crow leaves, signaling that the family has successfully woven the memory of her loss into the fabric of their new, daily lives. We sometimes talk about healing as though the goal is to return to the person we once were before the loss. But what if grief changes us, as what we’ve lost continues to shape who we’ll become?
“You don’t ever get over grief,” a friend who lost her 11-year-old son in a tragic accident once said to me. “You just learn to walk alongside it.” I liked how she framed that. It wasn’t a burden to be carried, nor is it something we have to live under forever. And that’s good news. We don’t have to choose between grieving honestly and believing faithfully. We learn that most times they both walk hand in hand rather than something we have to overcome.
“We don’t want you to have the kind of grief that other people do,” said Paul, “people who don’t have any hope.” When Paul says we shouldn’t grieve like those who have no hope, what is he actually asking of us? Is he saying our grief has a different destination? That death doesn’t get the final word? That we can grieve without despairing? We often get focused on God being the God over life, and we sometimes downplay that He’s also the God over death. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and he’s the resurrection and the life. And yet, “though he may die…” His resurrection is the foundation of Christian hope, but it doesn’t make the pain of Thursday disappear just because Sunday is coming We should never use the promise of resurrection to rush someone through grief. There is a difference between knowing resurrection is coming and experiencing comfort today. Of course the resurrection is our ultimate hope and that the church is one of the ways we experience that hope. But Christian hope never gives us permission to avoid our grief. Actually, it gives us the freedom to enter into it without surrendering to despair.
Paul doesn’t tell the Thessalonians to explain grief to one another. He doesn't tell them to correct one another's emotions. He doesn't even tell them to make one another feel better. He tells them to comfort one another. Truly, there is nothing that anyone can say that will suddenly heal my family from the pain the death of my brother-in-law has caused. It isn’t “one thing.” It’s “all the things.” It’s all the cards, the flowers, the friends walking alongside us -all of this helps the most. In fact, the most comforting text sent to me simply said, “No words, just prayers. Love you.” It’s all of this that brings comfort. And it’s knowing that the resurrection will have the final say over death.
And so I’ll also finish with how Paul closed: “Comfort each other with these words.”
I read a book a few years ago by the British writer Max Porter titled “Grief is a Thing with Feathers.” In it, a father, who is a scholar writing a book about poet Ted Hughes, and his two young sons live in a London apartment after the sudden, accidental death of the mother and wife. There is a strange, human-sized crow that visits them in the depths of their despair, who talks and is part trickster, part therapist, part protector, and part babysitter. The book balances dark, angular wit with devastating sadness, but portrays grief not as a quiet process, but as something more chaotic and physical. And not quick to fix, either.
The book’s title is a play on the words of the famous American poet Emily Dickinson's poem “Hope is a Thing with Feathers.” The interchange of the words “grief” and “hope” fascinates me. Two seemingly opposite experiences share the same imagery. One speaks of the possibility of hope; the other of the unavoidable weight of loss.
On some level, everyone is in a stage of grieving something. We grieve loved ones who have “fallen asleep” before us. As of this moment, I’m grieving with my family over the loss of my brother-in-law Ben. But we also grieve so many other things. The loss of living people, like friendships, or family members who have walked away from us because of theological or even political beliefs. We grieve time lost, like moments in our past that were so much better than right now. We grieve over the memory of when our children were little, and we still had to tie their shoes. And also, as of right now, many of us might be grieving these past midterm elections. Really, there are no limits to the things that we grieve.
“But,” Paul reminds us, “if we believe that Jesus died and rose, that’s the way God will also, through Jesus, bring with him those who have fallen asleep.”
I do not think Paul is saying here, don’t worry about all of this – ignore your pain. In the context of the way the Scriptures speak about death and grief, we are to hold grief and hope together, allowing neither to diminish the reality of the other. Hope does not in any way eliminate grief, because grief is actually an expression of love, and hope gives us permission to continue loving even after loss. And the Christian hope doesn’t mean we grieve less; it just means we grieve differently.
Like Paul said, “Let me explain:”
Grief is not a sequence of neat stages. Whether we realize it or not, we commonly quote the “Five Stages of Grief,” which was introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. We’ll often say that stage 1 is denial. Stage 2 is anger, working through bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But it isn’t said enough that Kübler-Ross believed that mourning doesn’t follow a tidy checklist. Porter’s book has a fragmented structure showing that loss is messy, confusing, and constantly shifting between deep sadness, dark humor, and domestic routine. Grief is non-linear, and not a strict, step-by-step sequence. People frequently experience them out of order, jumping back and forth, and even going through multiple stages at the same time. If grief is a thing with feathers, it flies all over the place. Of course we’ll experience great loss of a loved one at a holiday or a birthday, but even more often, we’ll just be driving to work, coffee in one hand, and it’ll just be there and we’ll suddenly and without warning, we’ll break down. No rhyme or reason.
Grieving requires active engagement. One thing we don’t talk about enough when we are grieving is biblical lamenting. Grieving is working through the deep emotional pain of loss, and lamenting is taking that grief in an honest, prayerful expression, directly to God. Prophets like Jeremiah lamented the destruction and desolation of Jerusalem after the Babylonian exile. King Jehoshaphat leads the entire nation of Judah in a corporate lament when facing a massive invading army. Job bitterly questions God about his own existence and suffering after losing his family and health. Jesus wept outside the tomb of His friend Lazarus, sharing directly in human grief and loss. And even more so, Jesus, in Gethsemane, cried out in agonizing emotional distress before his crucifixion. Over a third to nearly half of the Psalms are a masterclass of how to sing and pray while lamenting. You cannot read Psalm 88 and wonder who the writer is upset with. Some of the other psalms end with something like: “…but you are still God…” Not this one. It never lets up: “…Your fierce wrath has gone over me; Your terrors have cut me off…”
Part of lament is permitting ourselves to be angry with God. To question Him and to tell Him we’re disappointed. To acknowledge that something isn't fair. We have plenty of Christian language about trusting God, but considerably less about bringing our anguish to God.
Yet, He’s God. He can more than handle it. In fact, God even says something like: “Go ahead. Throw your worst. Throw your rocks at me. I'm not threatened by them. I love you,” when we’re told, “Cast all your cares on Him because He cares for you” (1 Peter 5:6-7).
This is the active engagement that people of faith must have. He never said the suffering or the pain would be removed. But He did say He’d always be with us in it.
Healing means integration, not forgetting. Porter’s novel doesn’t end with the family “getting over” the mother’s death. Instead, it concludes when the Crow leaves, signaling that the family has successfully woven the memory of her loss into the fabric of their new, daily lives. We sometimes talk about healing as though the goal is to return to the person we once were before the loss. But what if grief changes us, as what we’ve lost continues to shape who we’ll become?
“You don’t ever get over grief,” a friend who lost her 11-year-old son in a tragic accident once said to me. “You just learn to walk alongside it.” I liked how she framed that. It wasn’t a burden to be carried, nor is it something we have to live under forever. And that’s good news. We don’t have to choose between grieving honestly and believing faithfully. We learn that most times they both walk hand in hand rather than something we have to overcome.
“We don’t want you to have the kind of grief that other people do,” said Paul, “people who don’t have any hope.” When Paul says we shouldn’t grieve like those who have no hope, what is he actually asking of us? Is he saying our grief has a different destination? That death doesn’t get the final word? That we can grieve without despairing? We often get focused on God being the God over life, and we sometimes downplay that He’s also the God over death. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and he’s the resurrection and the life. And yet, “though he may die…” His resurrection is the foundation of Christian hope, but it doesn’t make the pain of Thursday disappear just because Sunday is coming We should never use the promise of resurrection to rush someone through grief. There is a difference between knowing resurrection is coming and experiencing comfort today. Of course the resurrection is our ultimate hope and that the church is one of the ways we experience that hope. But Christian hope never gives us permission to avoid our grief. Actually, it gives us the freedom to enter into it without surrendering to despair.
Paul doesn’t tell the Thessalonians to explain grief to one another. He doesn't tell them to correct one another's emotions. He doesn't even tell them to make one another feel better. He tells them to comfort one another. Truly, there is nothing that anyone can say that will suddenly heal my family from the pain the death of my brother-in-law has caused. It isn’t “one thing.” It’s “all the things.” It’s all the cards, the flowers, the friends walking alongside us -all of this helps the most. In fact, the most comforting text sent to me simply said, “No words, just prayers. Love you.” It’s all of this that brings comfort. And it’s knowing that the resurrection will have the final say over death.
And so I’ll also finish with how Paul closed: “Comfort each other with these words.”
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