Trading Mourning for Gladness: How God Brings New Life Despite Our Deepest Losses by Wycliffe Bible Translatorsნიმუში

A Season of Loss

While navigating through life in a broken world, there’s one experience that has rocked every one of us in one way or another: Loss.

You don’t have to look far to find someone you’re connected to who’s been impacted by loss or someone who is in mourning.

We all know people who have been impacted by the death of a friend or family member. It might be you, struggling to move forward without a person you love.

And it’s not always death that is cause for sorrow; unresolved conflicts, broken relationships between you and loved ones or medical issues can all lead us to feel loss and grief and mourning too.

Many people have experienced the loss of income or the loss of a job: Things they’ve relied on for financial security have become unstable, and they don’t feel as secure about the future as they used to.

Losing a pet is another cause of deep grief in many people’s lives. Animals become important companions and beloved parts of families. Losing them can be devastating.

Mourning a relationship, even when the other person is still living, is often a significant loss too. It might be a marriage ending or a friendship that has fractured. God designed us to be in community with one another, and emotionally losing people we were once close to can sometimes feel as hard for us as navigating a physical loss.

When circumstances — both in society and for each of us personally — change in unexpected and unwelcome ways, we lose parts of life that we’re not sure we’ll ever fully get back. And when that happens, we often feel like we lose part of ourselves too.

What have you lost that’s breaking your heart?

In Isaiah 61, a prophecy of the Messiah, Jesus promises to bring restoration to all of life’s injustices. Verse 3 highlights His ability to regenerate you in situations that involve loss: mourning a life, the destruction of something loved, the feeling of being defeated.

When you understand Christ’s power to redeem, you’re given an amazing gift that can help you keep sailing even in the roughest of waters.

Hope.

Over the next four days, you’ll explore how Christ brings hope even in the midst of loss.

Reflection:

• In what ways has your heart been broken by loss?
• How have you already experienced God’s promise to comfort the brokenhearted (Psalm 34:18)? And how are you asking Him to continue to fulfill that promise?