Editor’s note: Nicole Funk is a Bible teacher at Front Range Christian School.
I am convinced that much of the Christian life is lived in the space between grief and hope.
This is an idea that I have been contemplating since Holy Week, because the reminder of death and loss felt a bit more real to me this year.
The day before Good Friday, my grandma passed away after a long and losing battle against dementia. Anyone who has lost a loved one to this disease knows that it feels like a thousand small deaths — although you have grieved the loss of that person over many weeks and months and years, it still is so painful when it is finally over. Because of this, I had felt so much peace throughout the week as I held her hand and said my final goodbyes — excited that her pain and suffering would finally be over. But on the morning that my mom called to tell me that my grandma had finally gone to be with Jesus, I was surprised by the fact that I couldn’t stop crying on my drive to work.
All day, I fought to compose myself in front of students and co-workers until an observant freshmen student asked if I was ok. When I told her, she simply hugged me and cried with me. As we began to talk, I eventually said to her: “I am grateful that the Christian life gives us space to experience grief and hope at the same time. We are invited to lament over all the broken things that are not as we hoped they would be.”
Holy Saturday, the day after we lament Jesus’ death on Good Friday, but before we rejoice in the hope of His resurrection on Easter Sunday, has now become my favorite day of the year. It is a reminder that much of our life is spent in this liminal space between grief and hope. We are assured throughout Scripture of the hope of Jesus’ second coming and new creation, when God will restore all that is broken, wiping away every tear from our eyes.
For now, we live in a space where we still lament all that is not as it should be, clinging onto the hope of new life and resurrection.
So as you think of your own life, may you give yourself permission to grieve all that is not as it should be. May you give yourself permission to feel the loss of things both big and small. For you that might be a real loss like the death of a loved one or a battle against chronic disease and illness. For others, it might be a significant change in your life: losing your job, having to find a new church, navigating a change in a friendship, moving to a new state, having another baby, etc. This time of the school year is always bittersweet as we prepare to say goodbye to our beloved seniors — so excited about what is next for them but also deeply sad that they are moving on to something new.
As I have sat with my own bittersweet feelings these past few weeks, I have experienced great comfort in these words by a Christian writer named Parker Palmer, and I pray that they speak truth into whatever circumstances you find yourself in the middle of.
“The deeper our faith, the more doubt we must endure; the deeper our hope, the more prone we are to despair; the deeper our love, the more pain its loss will bring: these are a few of the paradoxes we must hold as human beings. If we refuse to hold them in the hopes of living without doubt, despair, and pain, we also find ourselves living without hope, faith, and love.”
May we be a people who live well in the space between grief and hope. May we find courage to lament all that is not as it should be. And as we lament the change and loss in our own lives, may we become people more marked by the hope, faith, and love of the Kingdom of God.
