Precious Death

In the last 18 months, I have encountered death more times more closely than at any other time in my life.  In the spring of last year, my grandmother passed away.  A few months later, my grandfather followed her.  Scarcely a year ago, the mother of some of my students also died.  And then two weeks ago, a dear friend also went home.  And while I didn’t know him, one of my best friends lost a close friend as well.

Both my grandparents’ deaths and my students’ mom’s death we saw coming.  We had a chance to prepare.  My friend and my friend’s friend, not so much.  The whole week after my friend’s death I had a line from a song by Andrew Peterson running through my head:

“'Cause every death is a question mark
“At the end of the book of a beating heart”

(Andrew Peterson, “Come Back Soon”)

When death comes, no matter how expected, we cannot help but feel like something has ended that should not have.  Even more so when it is sudden and unexpected.  I find myself thinking of all the things I wanted to do with my friend and which I never will be able to do.  Why has her life ended before she’s lived it?  Why?

“There’s a grief that can’t be spoken,

There’s a pain goes on and on.

Empty chairs and empty tables,

Now my friends are dead and gone.”

(Les Miserables, “Empty Chairs and Empty Tables”)

Death aches.  I still search for words to speak of my friend’s death.  I know it must be a hundred times worse for her husband and parents and siblings.  How do you speak of a life that ended at their own hand?  How do you reconcile a faith in Christ that drove someone to pray with all their might for their siblings’ salvation with that same person’s suicide?  I don’t know.

When someone is married or a baby is born, we rejoice.  We recognize that life is precious.  What I think we forget sometimes is that death is precious too.  Psalm 116:15 says “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (NKJV).  Death entered the world through sin and is not part of perfection but God does not take it lightly.  The death of his saints is precious to him.

I read Psalm 116 sometime around my grandmother’s death last spring and that verse stuck with me.  With every new person who passed away, it came back to me.  After my friend’s suicide, I went back to the Psalm wondering if the context was martyrdom but it wasn’t.  It’s just David crying out to God for salvation in a difficult time and then declaring that the death of his saints is precious in God’s eyes.

Think on that.

The death of God’s children is precious.  It’s not wasted.  It’s not pointless.  It’s not meaningless.

It is precious

Valuable.  Costly.  Prized and priceless.  Not empty.  Not worthless.  Not hopeless.

Even now, I’m not sure exactly what I want to say.  Or how to say it.  But I think it comes down to this.  All life is precious.  But the death of His saints is also precious.  It isn’t meaningless.  No matter how it seems, the death of God’s children is not pointless.  Death is not part of perfection – one day it will be done away with – but God can redeem even that.

I don’t know how God will use the death of my friend for his glory.  But I know he can.  Maybe I’ll never know how he’ll use it.  I hope that it will draw her friends and family closer to God and to each other.  I know that my Redeemer lives and that he holds his children close.

We grieve when a loved one dies.  We grieve for what we lost with them.  We grieve for the pain that their dear ones are in.  But we do not grieve without hope.  Because of Jesus, we can have confidence that Death will be defeated forever.

Christ has died.

Christ is risen.

Christ will come again!

And when he comes, “…the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16b-17)

Come back soon, Lord Jesus.

“So when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written: “Death is swallowed up in victory.”

'O Death, where is your sting?
O Hades, where is your victory?’

The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

1 Corinthians 15:54-57, NKJV