Casandra Martin

Grief is a difficult, strangling, heavy emotion. It sits on our chests like a weight, so dense that we feel like we won’t be able to take our next breath. While grief has common elements, everybody’s grief is unique. It takes on the dimensions and facets of the love that we shared with the person who is gone. When we grieve, our souls rebel against the hole that has suddenly been created in our hearts.

Watch the faces of the grieving, and we discover that grief is universal. We all grieve. Perhaps in different ways, with different customs, but the impact of grief rips at everyone’s heart regardless of age, nationality, gender, or culture. It doesn’t matter if you live in an industrialized, modern society or a third-world country, grief is real, present, and touches us in our most private, vulnerable places.

In thinking about grief, I keep coming back to one thought. Grief is evidence of God’s goodness. The universality of grief points to the truth that death was never God’s plan for our hearts. No matter how young, old, infirm, or healthy someone is, we fight against death. It leaves a hole in our hearts that we were never meant to experience. Grief testifies that our hearts were made for life, love, joy, and comfort. Grief, loneliness, pain, and brokenness are the consequences of sin.

“’O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?’

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” – 1 Corinthians 15:55-57

My Jesus Resolution today is to search for His goodness in my grief. Grief reminds me that I am not meant for this world. My home is somewhere else. The pain of grief is real and fresh, but the power of grief is tempered by the love poured out from the cross. The empty tomb isn’t just a historical fact. It shouts the truth about God’s good intention for my soul.