I have been reading a book entitled Confessions of a Grieving Christian by the author Zig Ziglar.  Many of you are sad this morning over the loss of a close friend, father, and husband; so I thought I would mention a few encouraging words from this book.  Note that the author wrote this book after the loss of his own daughter.

Are you aware that God Himself grieves?  The psalmist asserted, “How often they provoked Him in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert” (Ps. 78:40 NKJV).  God grieves when His people rebel or refuse to obey.

Zig goes on to mention several other times in the Bible that God is shown to express grief.  Though the context above is one of God greiving over our sin, I think there is a direct connection to the loss of a loved one.  The reason is that death exists because of Adam’s sin and our sin.  This grieves God.  He doesn’t rejoice that there is death in the world.  Consequently I think it also grieves God that in a fallen world death takes people from those who love them.  Death takes fathers, mothers, sons, and daughters.

However, we need to be careful that we do not disconnect death from the will of God.  Every death grieves God but every death is absolutely the will of God.  Here we have a glorious intersection of God’s will and God’s grief.  Throughout the Bible we see that God plans things that He knows will grieve Him and others, but He plans them because He is loving and wise.  For instance, He created in Gen 1 knowing that he would be grieved that he made man in Gen 6.  Jesus planned to endure the cross knowing what grief He would endure.  Why does God plan such things?  Is He a glutton for punishment?  Does He enjoy the suffering of others?

I think the answer to why God planned a world with both His and our grief to take place at many times is that it is what best expresses His glory, love, mercy, grace, etc…. God planned a world where His will and grief intersect because He wanted a world where we would see the most of His glory.  Having never lost an immediate member of my family.  I say this somewhat hypocritically, but I do know that Job learned things “too wonderful for” him through the loss of his family, through grief, through seeing that God was all he had and eventually all that he needed.

We must not give in to either of two primary temptations at this point in time.  One is to believe that God isn’t good.  Another is to believe that God didn’t know, couldn’t do anything about it, or didn’t have a purpose in this.  God is absolutely good and God is absolutely in control of every molecule in the universe.  Thus, when we grieve, we must grieve in search of His goodness and His character, believing that His will is better than anything we could contrive.  This is the difficult love of God, but it is always what is best for us.  Ultimately, we must also remember that our grief is nothing that God Himself doesn’t personally know, as He lost His own Son through a brutal murder…..according to His will.