Loss. It is the worst of feelings. When you lose something—whether it is simple things like keys, wallets, glasses, or cellphones—a sinking feeling of doom appears.
When loss takes a greater toll as sickness and death do, then we must steel ourselves for seismic change. The norms are gone and transitions, welcomed or not, are on the horizon.
Three years ago, my wife of thirty-two years passed away due to Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a little known and always fatal neurodegenerative disorder. That is loss.
Like so many before me, the grief associated with death can be overwhelming and consuming. Certainly, psychologists have identified the various grief patterns, but even with the knowledge that one is “normal” in experiencing these feelings, it never fully mitigates the lasting impact of loss—at least not for me.
What is sadly also true is that no one escapes losing someone. As Solomon says, “There is…a time to be born and a time to die.” Whether you pass before others or vice versa, it is the only bridge afforded to the next life, whatever that may be.
Which leads to a logical question worthy of an answer. Why is death certain?
After all, if you were God, why allow death, suffering, sickness, and so forth? It is the best argument against a benevolent creator, if there is one, in the atheistic philosophy.
Fair enough.
For a theist, one who believes there is a creator and generally believes in a loving nature associated with that creator, then perhaps a different perspective should be in mind.
C.S. Lewis also lost his wife to death. In a short book entitled A Grief Observed, he sees true faith:
“You never know how much you really believe anything until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life and death to you. It is easy to say you believe a rope to be strong and sound as long as you are merely using it to cord a box. But suppose you had to hang by that rope over a precipice. Wouldn’t you then first discover how much you really trusted it?”
Maybe that is why we must endure death—to measure our trust in God versus our trust in ourselves.
There is another factor my theistic friends will beat me up on if I fail to mention and that is the cause of death as a spiritual/sin problem. This is true, too, but I will save that doctrine for another day. In any case, faith is born out of a recognition of God and trust, as Lewis remarks, is best tested under duress and self-examination.
Maybe you are in the season of life I am in—the season of grief. If so, I hope you are comforted with a hope in the eternal.
If you have yet to truly lose someone that is as close as a spouse, brother, sister, mother, or father, remember to prepare your heart now for this truth and love them every moment.
It would be a loss not to do so…
Kent Simmons is the pastor of Canyon Community Church in Kingman, AZ. He can be reached at kent@canyon-church.com.