It is an incredible blessing to speak on the subject of grief, though I confess it is one I approach with humility. Grief is not simple. It is personal. It is layered. It manifests differently in every heart. As someone wisely said, “Death is not unusual. People die every day. But each death is unique. Lives woven together are now torn apart.” When Jesus stood at the tomb of Lazarus, He already knew a resurrection was minutes away. He had declared Himself to be “the resurrection, and the life.” And yet—He wept. Those two words remind us that grief is not weakness. It is love expressing its wound.

When I was fifteen, I stood in a hospital hallway after my dad had been rushed hours away. We assumed it was the flu. We assumed everything would be fine. But it wasn’t. I did not have a theological grid for grief at that age. I just knew something inside of me had been torn out. Years later, when April lost her mother suddenly, we were reminded again that grief does not disappear with maturity. It simply takes different shapes. Jesus wept because He loved Lazarus (John 11:36). Grief is the cost of loving deeply. The deeper the love, the deeper the ache.

The Bible never rebukes sorrow. Psalm 34:18 says, “The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.” He does not stand distant from our pain—He draws near to it. Psalm 56:8 reminds us that God bottles our tears. And 1 Thessalonians 4:13 tells us we do sorrow, but not as those without hope. Christian grief is not the absence of pain; it is pain with promise. We cry—and we cling. We mourn—and we believe. Resurrection does not erase the valley, but it guarantees the valley is not the end.