Good Friday and Child Loss

Note: This is an entry for a community devotional I originally wrote in 2019. I reposted it on my Wordpress blog in 2021. I’ve made some minor changes in order to repost it here. The text for the day was Psalm 22.

Five days before Christmas, 2017, our 18-month-old son died unexpectedly. He was perfectly healthy, and there is no known cause of death. I can accept that this loss and grief is part of my story, but I’m still having trouble accepting that my son is gone. “Why, God?” has been my consistent and consistently unanswered question.

I can imagine the grief of Mary, the mother of Jesus, watching her son die on a cross. “Why, God?” Jesus had given hope and healing to so many—why was God allowing him to die at the hands of the authorities?

Soon after Jesus was born, King Herod had all young children around Bethlehem killed, but Jesus and his parents escaped to safety in Egypt (Matthew 2:16–18). How many bereaved parents cried out, “Why, God?” And now, thirty-odd years later, Mary witnesses the fulfillment of Herod’s intent: her innocent son killed by authorities. How many parents today cry out, “Why, God?” when their children die because of sickness, malnourishment, violence, or accident?

It is easy for us, who have the Gospels, to understand Good Friday through the lens of Easter. We have Easter hope and know that the resurrection of Jesus is proof of God’s victory over death. This is at the core of the Christian faith. On that first “Good” Friday, however, there was no hope of Jesus’s resurrection. His death was not considered redemptive. His death was the end of hope in the Kingdom of God he had proclaimed. God had not protected him or saved him. The authorities had won. Death, as always, had the final say.

God could have redeemed humanity from sin and death with a thought. But God chose solidarity with humans through death. “I will not share you with death, so I will share death with you.” Jesus did not pretend to die—he really died. The redemption of resurrection comes through a real death. The joy of resurrection comes through the pain and grief of death.

The writer of Ecclesiastes says that “the heart of the wise is in the house of mourning” (7:4). This does not mean we should take a morbid view of existence. Rather, it is to recognize that God does not deliver us away from death, but delivers us through death. Easter is not a celebration of joy without grief, but joy through grief. Read Psalm 22 again, and consider how the writer suffers before being able to rejoice in deliverance.

I might never have my Good Friday “Why, God?” answered, and the joy of Easter still seems a long way off. But through Good Friday comes Easter; through grief comes joy; through death comes resurrection. I encourage you to meditate on these things. And amidst the joy of Easter Sunday, please remember those in your community who grieve, for whom rejoicing in resurrection may not be easy after experiencing the death of a loved one. God bless you and keep you.