Helping with grief during Easter

Recently many people have been grieving the loss of a young girl from our church.  The grief has stretched far beyond our church or even her college she was attending.  Many of you heard about her from my last post here.

As I have been thinking about things the past few days and working through this grief with many people online and in person I am also thinking about our upcoming celebration of Easter.

The definition of grief in the Merriam Webster dictionary is this:

Grief – deep and poignant distress caused by or as if by bereavement

This distress is understandable as we lose a loved one from this life.  We understand that we will never see this person again this side of heaven.  There are some that thought they would spend the rest of their life with this person.

It is even more understandable to have this deep distress when a student passes away because we see that their was so much more life to be lived for that person or so we thought.  When somebody who is older dies there is still a time of grief, but I think we also have an understanding that this time was coming.  When a young person dies it feels as if time was taken away from us here on earth.

Then we think of Easter!  My memories of Easter at our church are of celebration and unity.  I think of how for the past 19 years our church has moved to the Arena in our town and celebrated Easter there opening the doors for our community to join us.

Easter is meant to be a celebration of Jesus conquering death.  What an amazing thing to celebrate, but think of the people that were close to him physically on earth.  Some of them got to see him again when he came back to earth, but the others had to feel like he was gone too soon.  They had to feel like they missed out on time spent with him.  They had to feel this deep distress that he was no longer there.

Jesus was clear with with his followers that his time with them wasn’t over yet.  They knew that they had hope because of Jesus.  They knew that he was preparing a place for them in heaven if they would choose to follow him.

That is awesome news for the people that were dealing with grief back around that first Good Friday and Easter weekend.  This is also great news for us today.  We know that we can be reunited again one day in Heaven.  More importantly than being reunited with each other we also know that we will be with Jesus in heaven as well.

Grief is important and I believe we must work through it together.  One of the best ways to overcome grief is by sharing the hope Jesus offers us with others.

The Hope of Heaven doesn’t eliminate Grief, but it does change the way we respond to it.  Share this love with your students and families today!