Your Journey Through GriefSample

### DAY ONE: Pain and Hope at the Same Time As believers, we grieve when a loved one dies. Death hurts—a lot! The testimony of Scripture and of Christians during the last 2,000-plus years is that believing in Jesus does not eliminate grief. Death is an enemy. In some ways perhaps grief is even more painful for the believer. God’s love has softened our hearts to the point that we care and love more, so the pain of death is especially excruciating. Deep grief is the price of great love. Yes, we grieve. But we grieve differently. That difference is not the absence of pain. It’s that we experience excruciating pain and irrepressible hope at the same time. For the Christian this journey is about doing the human work of grief while giving God full opportunity to bring real healing. It’s about embracing the “not OK-ness” of death and eventually choosing to go on living anyway. Sometimes the waves of pain and the waves of hope will chase each other as they crash on the shores of your soul. Only a believer who is grieving can understand how it can be possible to feel such excruciating pain and still have such indestructible hope. It’s OK to hurt. And it’s OK to hope.