For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
1 Thessalonians 4:14 (NIV)
Grief With a Floor Under It
“At least it was quick,” he says, and hears himself say it, and puts a hand up like he’s stopping traffic. “That came out wrong. I’m sorry. I meant I’m sorry.”
They’re two bays apart at the self-serve car wash on a Saturday morning, both of them holding a wand, his timer running down. He knew her husband a little, mostly from the parking lot at work. She buried him five weeks ago and she’s out here because the car got filthy anyway, and nobody warns you that the ordinary things keep coming due.
The church in Thessalonica had people in it who had died. Paul writes so the ones left will know about them, and he says why: so they will not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. He leaves their grieving in place and goes after the hopelessness.
For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
Jesus died. The others fell asleep. Paul puts the blunt word on Jesus and gives everybody else in that sentence the softer one. He can call it sleep because of what he says he believes, that Jesus died and rose again.
A funeral lasts as long as it lasts. Paul puts a floor under the grieving and stops there. He gives no date and no description of how any of it will look.
God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. The condition travels inside the sentence, in him, and the weighing of any one person belongs to God. The promise itself arrives whole. God brings them along with Jesus, and Paul states it as settled.
Paul ends by telling them to encourage one another with these words. He gives the words to the whole church and lets them pass it around themselves.
The water quit on him a while back and the wand is dripping on his shoe. He’s working out whether to walk over there or leave her alone with the rest of her Saturday.
A Prayer to Remember
I’m praying for someone I will never meet, early into a loss that the people around them have already stopped mentioning. I won’t pretend to know what they need. Be in the house they come home to. Send them someone who says the wrong thing and stays anyway.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
