Christianity Today

My question would be what does good grief look like to the Christian who does not know the heart of the child that was lost? It might be very different.

While I see that death works indiscriminately, I believe God works very specifically. Death is like an elephant who unwittingly steps on a mouse, unaware that he has taken a life. God sees all, even every hair on our heads are counted. He is completely aware and has a loving and specific remedy prepared for every situation. I was 13 when a close sibling suddenly died, and the 40 years since have been washed over with increasing awareness of God's specific grace for me in those chaotic days following.

I too lost my daughter 2-4-10 from a pulmonary embolism. She was about to graduate from college. Shortly after her death, I would have written a similar story. In fact the Book of Job was a central component of my early grief. But today, my Good Grief would have a very different perspective and I suspect yours will too. The loss of a child is unique. As a Rabbi said centuries ago, there is a word for one who lost their parents (orphan), one who loses their spouse (widow) but not for one who loses their child. This rabbi said it was because no word can describe it. I think it is because our relationship is the same in reality: I still have a daughter and I am still her father. But we are on a path here different than other fathers and daughters. Good grief requires me to live that path. Just because our daughters are perfectly united to Christ doesn't mean we put them in a box we bring out on special days or when it suits us. I look forward to what you have to say next year

I am watching my wife descend through lung cancer. While my full engagement with the grief of personal loss is still future, that future keeps crashing in unexpectedly upon me with grim hints at its devastating power. Like Ben, I am convinced that we live in a fallen, broken world in which death works indiscriminately and indeterminably. I do not believe that God is the immediate or necessary cause of all suffering. Yet I remain a Calvinist. For me, Job's words are anchored in faith. Qualifying God's involvement in Job's suffering as "permission" does not liberate us from the difficulties of reconciling God's sovereignty with the problem of suffering. I believe that "All the days ordained for me were written in [God's] book before one of them came to be" (Psalm 139:16). The mysteries of God's sovereignty escape me, but his unfailing love and faithfulness are bedrock. Thank you for so eloquently expressing your grief and your hope.

I heartily concur with the praise already posted for your deeply personal essay. Surely the God who wept at Lazarus' tomb does not expect us to do other than likewise. But I did cringe for a moment at this statement: "...God is in the trenches with us, fighting the very same evils we fight in this world—disease, suffering, sorrow, sin, and death itself. He cries with us." I am not a Calvinist any more than you are, and I am not in any sense a New Testament scholar. But the suggestion that God is in the battle with us in the same way as we are is uncomfortable. It is not that He and our enemy are struggling for mastery now, and that God will triumph in the end. The Cross and the Resurrection which we have just celebrated are both proofs positive that He has already won the ultimate battle. The exact nature of His sovereignty, as another response put it, may be uncertain; but the FACT of His sovereignty is sure, as you later affirmed. The CAUSE means nothing if we know Who is in CONTROL.