Death's Sting

I've been contemplating the meaning of that phrase recently for various reasons.  The acute pain of losing a loved one is indeed very sharp and pointed. When you think of that pain, even some time later, you draw short quick breaths, until the sting fades.

The sting is not for the person who has gone on from this life into the next, but for ourselves. There's a space missing in our lives that was once occupied. There was a love that burned bright, which now has dimmed.

I place my faith in the hope that one day that sting will be taken away. That there will be a place where death cannot reach us and where the pain of separation will be an unknown. My only prayer is that all of my loved ones will be there with me.

I don't think God gives us a certain amount of love to share, of which we must partition between our loved ones. Instead, I think He gives us a separate love, whole and unending, for those whom He gives to us. Just because we love someone completely and wholly doesn't mean we can't also love another completely and wholly, as in the case of our children. And just because someone has passed out of our current lives doesn't mean that love will become less or will be replaced.

I was reading in 2 Samuel about David after his affair with Bathsheba, and stopped when I read his response to hearing the news that his child had died:
"He said, 'While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept; for I said, "Who knows, the Lord may be gracious to me, that the child may live."  But now he has died; why should I fast?  Can I bring him back again?  I will go to him, but he will not return to me."


"I will go to him."  Those five words give me so much peace.