He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever. Revelation 21:4

 

If there’s a person who can speak to the topic of loss, it’s a man named Jerry Sittser.

Sittser, his wife, four children and his mother were returning home from a family outing one evening, when a drunk driver smashed head on into the family van. In that instant, Sittser lost his wife, youngest daughter and mother, plunging into a depth of grief he never knew was possible. The pain, “was relentless.” “Darkness,” Sittser wrote, “invaded my soul. But then again, so did light. Both contributed to my personal transformation.”[1]

Have you experienced loss that you didn’t think you could live through? Sittser says there is hope. “Loss can enlarge [the capacity of the soul] for anger, depression, despair and anguish, all of which are natural and legitimate…[but] Once enlarged, the soul is also capable of experiencing greater joy, strength, peace and love.”[2]

Our response to loss is what can make us more or less. “Only when we choose to pay attention to our souls… [will we] discover the world within.” Within Jerry Sittser was God, the same God who experienced the pain Sittser lives with every day. No matter how deep the pit into which I descend,” he wrote, “I keep finding God there.”[3]

One day, the Bible tells, God “will wipe every tear… and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Revelation 21:4).

If you find yourself in pain today, God longs to meet you there. He is big enough for your questions, your anguish and He has enough grace to fill your hurting soul.

[1] Sittser, Gerald Lawson.  A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows through Loss, Zondervan, Grand Rapids, MI, 2022, pp. 25.

[2] Ibid, p.28.

[3] Ibid, p. 144