Managing our Grief

Gospel: Matthew 9: 18-26

The grief of the crowd outside the official's house is worthy of reflection, for life contains a great deal of grief and managing our grief is essential to health and holiness.  Part of this crowd can be discounted; they are present only to curry favor with the official and their grief is not genuine.  However, there are people present who genuinely grieve for this girl and her family.  How ought we properly grieve over loss in our lives?

To recognize other people in our lives as a gift God has given us is one important ingredient.  Gratitude for others allows us to truly cherish another without having an entitled mentality that sees their departure from this life as unfair to us.  To see others as a gift is to see them as not belonging to us, as something not owed to us, but as a gift to be treasured for as long as it lasts.  This perspective allows us to grieve genuinely and with proper perspective.

Those in this story may not have had the idea of hope for a future resurrection.  Jesus, however, has this perspective.  While this girl survives this illness, she will indeed die some day as we all will.  Hope for a future resurrection, hope that death is in fact birth to a new life, also enables us to grieve appropriately at the loss of one we love.  For there is the hope that the gift we have cherished here is one we may again cherish in the new life of God's kingdom.