Silas
Beloved of All
Your heart is hurting as you share about your mother going to be with the Lord from Golgotha, and I hear the weight of grief in your words.
The Scripture calls God the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our tribulation. One reason He allows us to walk through affliction and then to know His comfort there is so that we can later comfort others with the same comfort we ourselves have received from Him. In the darkest hours, when the night feels long and the storm does not lift, He stands by to strengthen and encourage. He did this for the apostle Paul through beatings, shipwreck, and a terrible storm at sea that lasted many days without sun, and He will stand by you now in this hard place and dark night to give you the strength and comfort you need.
Jesus knows this kind of sorrow personally. He is described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and the psalm that foretells His suffering shows how deeply He entered into our pain. He knows what it is to grieve until your stomach aches and your throat is tight and you feel you cannot swallow. Because He suffered, He is able to help and to comfort those who suffer. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every person. The wages of sin is death, and God laid on Him the iniquity of us all, so He tasted that spiritual death for us. Because He tasted death for you and for your mother, those who belong to Him do not have to taste it in that same way. Through His own death He put out of business him who had the power of death, that is the devil who brought death to mankind through temptation.
It is easy in a moment like this to become bitter and to blame God, but Scripture reminds us that death came by sin. By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed to all. Death with its sorrows and miseries was not God's original desire for us, but the result of sin. Jesus came to undo that work, to be the way of life set before each of us. As there were two trees before Adam, the tree of life and the tree that brought death, so now before every person there is the way of life and the way of death. To have the Son is to have life. Your mother, as you say she has gone with the Lord from Golgotha, is with Him because she trusted in what He did there.
We still sorrow, but not as those who have no hope. We sorrow for our own loss, for the comfort of a mother's presence and love and input into our lives that we miss so deeply. Job knew that kind of grief, a grief he wished could be weighed in balances, a grief that made him wish for death and then still cling to life. His friends first did well to sit in silence when they saw how great his grief was, and later Job spoke many things about death out of his pain that were not accurate. God later asked him, have the gates of death been opened to you, have you seen the doors of the shadow of death, to remind him that only God truly knows what lies beyond. We do not need to have all answers. We can rest in the Shepherd's promise, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff comfort me. His presence is the comfort, His rod to guide and correct, His staff to draw near and support.
May the Lord who is the God of all comfort draw near to you now, and let you experience His presence in this sorrow. Lean on Jesus alone for life and hope, for He alone bore your sin and your mother's sin at Golgotha and rose to give life. Ask Him to carry you day by day, to ease the ache, to guard your heart from bitterness, and to fill the empty place with His love until you see your mother again in His presence.
The Scripture calls God the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in our tribulation. One reason He allows us to walk through affliction and then to know His comfort there is so that we can later comfort others with the same comfort we ourselves have received from Him. In the darkest hours, when the night feels long and the storm does not lift, He stands by to strengthen and encourage. He did this for the apostle Paul through beatings, shipwreck, and a terrible storm at sea that lasted many days without sun, and He will stand by you now in this hard place and dark night to give you the strength and comfort you need.
Jesus knows this kind of sorrow personally. He is described as a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, and the psalm that foretells His suffering shows how deeply He entered into our pain. He knows what it is to grieve until your stomach aches and your throat is tight and you feel you cannot swallow. Because He suffered, He is able to help and to comfort those who suffer. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every person. The wages of sin is death, and God laid on Him the iniquity of us all, so He tasted that spiritual death for us. Because He tasted death for you and for your mother, those who belong to Him do not have to taste it in that same way. Through His own death He put out of business him who had the power of death, that is the devil who brought death to mankind through temptation.
It is easy in a moment like this to become bitter and to blame God, but Scripture reminds us that death came by sin. By one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, and so death passed to all. Death with its sorrows and miseries was not God's original desire for us, but the result of sin. Jesus came to undo that work, to be the way of life set before each of us. As there were two trees before Adam, the tree of life and the tree that brought death, so now before every person there is the way of life and the way of death. To have the Son is to have life. Your mother, as you say she has gone with the Lord from Golgotha, is with Him because she trusted in what He did there.
We still sorrow, but not as those who have no hope. We sorrow for our own loss, for the comfort of a mother's presence and love and input into our lives that we miss so deeply. Job knew that kind of grief, a grief he wished could be weighed in balances, a grief that made him wish for death and then still cling to life. His friends first did well to sit in silence when they saw how great his grief was, and later Job spoke many things about death out of his pain that were not accurate. God later asked him, have the gates of death been opened to you, have you seen the doors of the shadow of death, to remind him that only God truly knows what lies beyond. We do not need to have all answers. We can rest in the Shepherd's promise, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me, your rod and your staff comfort me. His presence is the comfort, His rod to guide and correct, His staff to draw near and support.
May the Lord who is the God of all comfort draw near to you now, and let you experience His presence in this sorrow. Lean on Jesus alone for life and hope, for He alone bore your sin and your mother's sin at Golgotha and rose to give life. Ask Him to carry you day by day, to ease the ache, to guard your heart from bitterness, and to fill the empty place with His love until you see your mother again in His presence.
