As we said goodbye to my mother-in-law this week, it hit me that we are only one month shy of ten years since my own mother died. My mother-in-law was a second mom to me. It was hard for us to say goodbye to her, and it was hard to think that this 92-year-old whom we thought would live forever was now gone from us. So we started again the journey of grief.

Death is hard.

Death is hard because it creates a vacuum … it sucks something out of our souls as we move deeper into grief. Sometimes it is as if the hole dug in our hearts is a bottomless pit. Even though I know that this vacuum in our souls is what ultimately deepens our souls and can lead to greater wisdom, the pain and suffering of the journey is not lessened by that hope.

Death is hard because it seems like it is the last word in our lives. We don’t truly know what is next beyond this human life, and we, who are people of faith … who believe that the resurrection is the gift given to all … still struggle to make sense of what is to come. So we create images of reunions and beautiful vistas and streets paved with gold in our search for comfort and meaning.

I was asked by one who grieves, “What if this is actually just the end? What if death is the final thing and there really is nothing more?” It caught me short, and all I could do was offer a hug. In our embrace, I shared that we live by the promise that God is with us and that we are not alone. That, yes, life always finally yields to death, but our proclamation is that death will finally yield to resurrection.

The Wisdom Pattern

It is what Richard Rohr calls the “wisdom pattern.” It is the way of the universe. It is the pattern of order, disorder, and reorder … construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction … life, death, and resurrection.

We live in a universe where we once thought black holes only bring death as they draw in stars and galaxies and planets bringing them to their own demise. But then our advanced space telescopes suddenly reveal evidence that the largest black holes are actually giving birth to stars and whole galaxies. In the great vacuum of the universe, what we thought only as a bringer of death becomes a giver of life.

The signs of this wisdom pattern are all around us. Each year, the giant red oak tree in our front yard sits alive and beautiful providing lush green in full view of where I am currently sitting. She produces acorns that, if not gathered up, provide new growth around her. Her leaves turn a beautiful yellow and orange each November and December, and as the winter sets in upon us, she looks as if she has died. Her sap has returned to the roots, and there are moments after a hard winter when we wonder if that sap might not rise again. Then the sap begins to flow and the leaves open and spread their pollen across the landscape once more.

The Mystery of Divine Love

So no, it is not ours to know what comes next, but what Jesus promised us was the abiding presence of a loving God. The mystics say that it was the love of God that set the universe in motion. It is the love of God that moves through every phase of all evolutionary cycles. It is the love of God that gave us birth, and it is the love of a God who dares to die our death with this proclamation that, even in that darkness, we are not alone.

I do not know what comes next. Death is finally a mystery that is not mine to explain. But I do know that love is what connects us in our grief … love is what is poured out in our mourning … and love is finally that thing that is bigger than this life here on this tiny planet. It is a love that is beyond time. Paul says it well: “Love never ends.”

It is finally that love of God that will not fail us and that will not let death be the final word.

You see, love is at the root of the mystery of life … the mystery of death … and the mystery of resurrection. So when we encounter mystery and cannot see beyond the darkness, we then yield ourselves to a God who holds us in a loving embrace … who meets us in our dying and invites us into the carriage of a love that has no end.

This is the gift of resurrection!