Beloved,
Please excuse me over the next couple of weeks as I continue to process Emma’s death. Her funeral was last Thursday, and I had hoped it would bring some closure and respite from the grief. But it has done neither.
Aren’t funerals supposed to bring closure?
That’s the common platitude, isn’t it? But it hasn’t proven true. If anything, watching my dear brother carry the casket of his little girl to the plot of earth where she would be buried only to have his weeping face pressed into my chest afterward—has only torn the wound of my sorrow wider. Just when I think my tear ducts are empty, they unleash a salty flood all over again. It’s happening even as I write.
Emma’s funeral was one of the most Christ-exalting I have ever attended. As Scripture was read, preached, prayed, and sung, it brought deep comfort and courage. I’m profoundly grateful for that. But gospel comfort is not the same as closure. For the funeral also brought me face to face with the stark, ugly reality of death—a reality that is no respecter of persons. Death strikes both young and old. It chokes believers and unbelievers alike. Death is a thief, and what it steals is never returned in this life. There will always be a princess-shaped hole in the Franks family.
Tell me—how does one find closure in the face of that?
That’s what I’m wrestling with. I do believe that, in time, God’s Spirit, word, and people will bring healing to those presently overwhelmed with grief. But it seems to me that there will never be a sense of resolution (that is how my dictionary defines “closure”) until the consummation when the final enemy, death, is defeated and little Emma’s body is raised, glorious, like that of her Savior. Then all of our salty tears will be wiped away, but not before. Seeking closure now has the potential to blunt the restless agitation that stirs God’s pilgrim people to continually cry out, “Come, Lord Jesus. Come quickly!”
So I’ve made a decision: I’m no longer going to search for closure in the present. Instead, I’m setting my eyes toward the last day with longing—when God’s life-giving blessing will flow as far as the curse is found.
This shift has given me the freedom to grieve—without feeling the need to “get over it”—and to do so in confident expectation that death will not win. For we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
Yours in Christ,
Pastor Nick