Mourning

 When they came to the threshing floor of Atad, which is beyond the Jordan, they lamented there with a very great and grievous lamentation, and he made a mourning for his father seven days.
Genesis 50:10 ESV
https://bible.com/bible/59/gen.50.10.ESV

The ancient Israelites mourned their patriarch greatly. After 40 days of embalming and 70 days of official Egyptian mourning, Joseph still mourned for his father for an extra week. Culturally in the West, people often don't like a fuss when grieving. But ancient Hebrew culture was evidently to cry out against the unwelcome intrusion that death is in the human experience.

Knowing that Jacob trusted the Lord and received His great and precious promises will have been a comfort to his son Joseph, but the sense of loss remains painful. Even if we know we'll be reunited, parting is such sweet sorrow. As Jesus said, God is the God of Jacob, and the God of the living, not the dead.

If, like Jacob and Joseph, we trust in the promised Saviour Jesus, we will receive eternal life. Then, people won't need to grieve us hopelessly, but in confidence that we're united with our Lord. Death for the believer is a comma, not a full stop.

Just because the Christian experience is joyful, doesn't mean to say that human sorrows are any less when tragedy strikes and bereavement happens. There was no death in the beginning, and there will be none in the end, for those who trust in Christ. Jesus's death and resurrection were nails in the coffin of death.

'Dear Lord, thank You for that counterintuitive truth that even though we may often be sorrowful, we can always be rejoicing. May it be so, for Jesus' sake, amen'

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