The pain of loss

Heartache comes by degrees. Job’s friends saw his grief-swathed figure and they were speechless. His heart was experiencing the deepest degree of pain. There is the crab-level of pain, with little reaction to being boiled. The blue jay-degree is higher. The bird shrieks when clawed by a cat. But the heartache of human loss is the highest degree of pain any organism can experience. Job’s pain degree would have been lower had the suffering been limited to his own body. But his misery is at the deepest degree because he has lost his family.

Christ comes to remove the pain of eternal loss. In REVELATION 21:1, John reports that ultimately, in Heaven, “there is no longer any sea.” The ocean, to John looking longingly from the prison island of Patmos, symbolized separation and loss. In Heaven, we will have the wonderful peace of the removal of the fear of loss. Because of Christ, we will never again experience that deepest degree of pain, that of being separated from those for whom we care the greatest!

TODAY’S FOCUS
If you are still aching over the loss of loved ones, allow the Holy Spirit to comfort you with the knowledge that someday even this deepest degree of pain will be healed, because you will forever be in the presence of all you care about the most.