We Grieve

This is, and should be, one of the passages used frequently at Christian funerals. It speaks of hope in the midst of sorrow. Certainly we Christians grieve. After my mother's death my grief was such that I fell into depression. But in many ways that grief over my mother's death was because of the bottling up of emotions rather than the grief. The depression was not so much about grief as not grieving.

This passage has sometimes been used to deny the loss that is felt. One pastor I knew told of having a family member rupture their gut in an attempt to hold back the tears. We grieve. We sorrow. We mourn. We just plain miss them. Holding back those feelings is wrong, even as we Christians continue to proclaim a hope of something beyond death.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

[13] But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about
those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
[14] For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through
Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. [15] For this we declare to
you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the
coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. [16] For the
Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call and with the
sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will
rise first. [17] Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the
clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with
the Lord forever. [18] Therefore encourage one another with these words.