So many people I know are dealing with loss right now; a dear friend lost her mother a few weeks ago, another is in the final death moments of a long and happy marriage, a third is grieving her daughter moving out of state, and yet another was just laid off from a job he loved for many years. What is God’s perspective of these things? How can we negotiate losing people and situations that we think we can’t live without? How can we manage our grief?

Here are three things to consider if you are grieving today:

One: this time of painful separation is only temporary. While the rest of your earthly life will be spent without the one or that thing that you love, the rest of your life is but a blink of an eye in the scope of eternity. These events are hardly a blip in the scope of an eternal lifetime. 

The problem with grieving is that it slooowwws down time. We become suspended in an artificial reality that is all too real. Days are long and nights are longer because we are stuck in the moment of our crisis like a fly caught in tree sap. Grief can make us feel as though we are swimming in tar, trying to reach a distant shore that keeps moving farther away and the swim is taking forever. Embracing God’s perspective that death and mourning are only temporary states can begin to help us shake off our sluggishness and get on with what is the rest of our short existence here.

Hear these words of Psalm 90 that offer us a perspective of how God measures time: 

A thousand years in your sight are like a day that has just gone by, or like a watch in the night. (Psalm 90:4, NIV 1984) 

In God’s perspective of time, a thousand years are like a day; so, 70-80+ years of an average life span are just a blink of an eye in the scope of our eternal life span.  In our eternal state, this very real grief will become a distant memory.

Two: loss and death aren’t the end. What joy can fill our hearts to know that! If we take on God’s perspective that death isn’t final, then we can begin to process our loss as more of a kind of misplacement rather than a permanent loss. Sometimes in life, we lose things that we know will never be found again. When you lose one earring after a night out, you can look for months and know you will never find it again; it is gone forever. But other times we simply misplace things, like car keys and sunglasses. We are sure they are somewhere in the house, in a purse, or in a pocket, but we have to look in a couple of places before we find them. Understanding death from God’s perspective is more like that; our loved one is not lost forever, just in another place, waiting to be reclaimed when we die and join them in eternity. 

And comfort comes from knowing that they are never, ever misplaced from God, for he is present in life, in death, and in eternity.

Three: when we lose someone or something, we are never alone. Even though we might feel alone, abandoned, and forsaken, there is never a moment when the God who was present before time is not present with us in our anguish. Even Jesus felt abandoned, but he was not. Upon his death, he experienced the power of resurrection and was reunited with the Father. Sin is the only thing that can ever separate us from the Father, but death never can, and so we can find comfort in knowing that in the depth of our loneliness, God is near. 

Jesus came in the flesh to embody the love of the Father for the world. He is the incarnate Lord, the walking-divine who instructs us about the intentions and perspectives of our eternal God. He experienced earthly life, earthly death, and heavenly resurrection. He appeared to His disciples just before his final ascension into heaven. Hear what Jesus had to say about abandonment: 

And surely, I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20, NIV 1984) 

This is Jesus’ reminder to you today that he is with you in your grief walk. He will never abandon or forsake you. There is no deep, dark place of sorrow that you can go without him. There is no level of anger that he cannot withstand from you; there is no place of hopelessness that he will not traverse by your side; there is no place of loneliness that he does not occupy. 

You are not alone. Thanks be to God.    

In our end is our beginning
In our time, infinity
In our doubt, there is believing
In our life, eternity
In our death, a resurrection
At the last, a victory

Unrevealed until its season
Something God alone can see. (Hymn of Promise, Natalie Sleeth, United Methodist Hymnal #707)

Unrevealed Until Its Season by Michelle Robertson