The Unspeakable Weight of Loss

Tragedy has a way of recalibrating priorities. What seems most important changes, seemingly in an instant. In recent days, the campus community I serve has walked through its own heartbreaking loss, grieving the death of a beloved student. We’ve prayed together and cried together. All the while, the Lord has held us together in his infinite mercy.

Tragedies, including ones as devastating as this one, have a particular force in the season of early adulthood. The burden of grief is always beyond our ability to bear, at any stage of life. No parent should outlive their children. A fiancee should not have to shift overnight from planning a wedding to a funeral.

But there are seasons of life in which the Lord seems to work in especially powerful ways, to capture our attention, to develop our Christian maturity, to redirect our ambitions, and to call us to a closer walk with Him. Here are several words of advice offered to college students in a time of tragedy, but with the hope that they may also be of benefit to all of us.

You Were Not Made to Bear This Weight

Looking into the eyes of college students experiencing the tragedy of death and loss, one is struck by what seems to be a sense of paralysis. We simply do not know what to do. For many 18 to 25-year-olds, this is especially pronounced. At that age, most of us have had very limited firsthand acquaintance with the pain of death and the loss of a close friend or family member. When it comes, the sense of absolute helplessness can be overwhelming. And the weight of pain can feel crushing.

A secular therapeutic worldview would simply assure us that we can and must find the resources within ourselves--and in one another--to cope and to navigate our way through the pain of loss. Appeals to “self-care” come as the primary prescription, assuring us that we have the innate resources to bear this weight. Obviously, we should not underestimate the need for good mutual support, care, and even grief counseling in a time of loss. But Christians know a deeper truth: we were not made to bear this weight.

Human beings were created for immortality, for eternal fellowship with their Creator. 

Death is not part of God’s good design for His creation. It is a consequence of the fall of our first parents, a demonstration of the curse upon the entire creation. It is not natural, nor to be romanticized. It is an awful, horrible thing. Human beings were created for immortality, for eternal fellowship with their Creator. 

So when your heart is breaking, when the weight of grief seems more than you can bear, do not believe the myth that you are somehow unusual, or that everyone else has the ability to shoulder it themselves and you simply did not get the necessary psychological equipment. We all process through loss and grief in different ways, but none of us were made to be self-sufficient in times like these.

Find refuge in the Lord. He is the author of life, the one who measures our days, and the one who never grows weary or tired. He will bear you up. He will be your strength and portion. He does so by His Holy Spirit, but He generally applies his comforting grace through human instruments. And so we bear one another up in the Lord. Note how the Apostle Paul describes this dynamic:

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.” (1 Corinthians 1:3-5)

Only Jesus, the perfect God-man, is able to bear our burden. And he is the one who still beckons with a Galilean accent, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He knows full well the pain of death, having wept at the loss of his friend Lazarus (John 11:35). He is “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).

Death Is Not Final

When the shadow of death overtakes us, its darkness can seem so blinding that we cannot begin to imagine it ever receding. And when death comes in especially unexpected ways and premature timing, the darkness seems especially overwhelming. 

Again, we dare not romanticize death or reassure one another with glib platitudes. The darkness is real, and it is indeed awful.

But it is not permanent. 

If you live long enough, you will stand in front of more coffins than you wish, weep at more gravesides than you can imagine. And in those moments, your eyes and your heart will be tempted to mislead you. That body so familiar and yet so lifeless. The finality of a casket being closed. The sight of burial in the ground. And months and years pass. Grass covers graves and headstones weather with age. 

But, as C.S. Lewis’ Aslan put it, “there is a deeper magic still.”

“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (John 11:25-26).

Jesus Christ died so that death would die. He now lives so that we might live forever. And it is only by being united to Him by faith that we can share in that eternal life. 

Jesus Christ died so that death would die. He now lives so that we might live forever.

For the believer, that eternal life is a present and future reality. Even now, we are alive in God, born again of His Spirit, and seated with Christ in the heavenly places (Ephesians 2:6). And we are assured that, at the moment of death, we are fully and immediately in the presence of God with Christ (Luke 23:43).

But there is also a future reality and hope. We know that there is a day coming, as sure as anything in the cosmos, when Jesus Christ will return in glory and raise our glorified bodies to eternal life (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). 

That body, so still now, will one day spring to life. And just like he did at that tomb in Bethany, when Jesus cries out to His friends, “Come out!” (John 11:43) there is nothing that can stand in the way of His power and dominion.

Don’t Brush Away the Big Questions

In some sense, life will go back to normal. We all bear the memories of loss and the scars of grief. But with each passing day, a new normal will emerge. We cannot change that and, in God’s common grace, we should be grateful that He has made us in such a way that time has a restoring ability.

But do not underestimate how God may be using this present moment to confront you with some necessary questions. What are you living for? What do you want to be said of you when you’ve breathed your last? 

Our culture runs away from so many of those questions and our ever-diminishing attention spans seem incapable of lingering over them. They make us deeply uncomfortable and quite often we do not especially like the answers that bubble up from our hearts.

But I believe that it is a profound mercy of God to be confronted with those deep questions in the earliest years of adulthood. Some go through their entire lives, without ever asking, or answering them honestly. And so we live lives consumed with frivolity. We believe the lie that this world is all that exists, that life is entirely about how much money, power, fame, pleasure, respect, security, and happiness I can accumulate. 

A life lived for the glory of God, no matter how short, is never wasted.

But the Bible cuts through this with laser precision. We were made, as a 17th-century catechism puts it, “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” A life lived for the glory of God, no matter how short, is never wasted. That kind of vision opens up new horizons for defining a life well lived, calling us to Paul’s admonition, “So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do everything for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31).

It may be that God will use a present moment of suffering and loss to clarify your professional vocation. It may be that God is calling you to make a change in a relationship that you know is overdue. Most significantly, it may be that He is calling you to turn from a pattern of sin in repentance and to look to Him for fresh mercies and a new start. It may be that the Lord is drawing you to himself, calling you right now to turn from your sin and to put your confidence fully in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior. 

Whatever it is, resist the temptation to swat those questions away. Far worse than enduring the pain of loss, suffering and grief would be to waste it, not turning to the Lord for grace.

Rest in the Goodness of God

The famed poet and hymn writer William Cowper (1731-1800) was a man deeply familiar with anguish and grief. His own life was one marked by severe depression and sorrow. But he knew of the power of Christian truth and the need for God’s people to call to mind what is most true in our moments of darkest night. His familiar hymn, “God Moves in a Mysterious Way” (1774), put it powerfully.

“God moves in a mysterious way His wonders to perform; He plants His footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs, and works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take, the clouds ye so much dread, are big with mercy, and shall break In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace; Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast, unfolding every hour; The bud may have a bitter taste, but sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err, and scan his work in vain; God is His own interpreter, and He will make it plain.”

“Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face.”

God’s providence--including His plan for your life--is absolutely and perfectly wise, even if often mysterious. But you can be assured of His love for you in Christ. He will not fail you. And He will bear you up, even on the last day.