Loss is nothing new to me. It is something I have become accustomed to in my life and ministry.
The first loss I remember comes from my childhood, when a friend died from complications related to juvenile diabetes. Before his death, I had experienced the loss of a grandparent and great-grandparents, but I wasn’t yet able to wrestle with or understand what those losses meant.
There are only a few details I remember from his service. He was cremated, and the urn stood on the communion table at the center of the sanctuary. I remember that we had a class field trip that day, and my mom came to pick me up so I could attend. I remember a choir member singing “Hymn of Promise.”
The words of that hymn stayed with me — even as a child — were: “Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.” Something about that moment felt holy as I sat in my home church listening.
In middle school, I experienced grief again when a friend with cystic fibrosis died following a failed lung transplant. She was a close friend from the horse barn, where I spent most weekends with a group of rowdy girls learning new skills and caring for the horses.
My mom went with me to her funeral. I do not remember much about that day, but in the middle of the service, I heard those same words sung again: “Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.”
They offered comfort once more in a moment of deep loss. Yet I still had questions. Why did my friend have to die so young? Why does a body sometimes reject a life-saving organ? I found myself wondering again and again why such good, kind people — like these two friends — could die in such ways.
Since childhood, I have attended many funerals, memorial services and celebrations of life. Not all of them include “Hymn of Promise,” but many do. Each time I hear it, I am transported back — to the sanctuary of my childhood, to the urn on the communion table, to that beloved choir member’s voice.
All these years later, I still carry those childhood questions. In fact, I have added a few more along the way. As human beings, we long for answers. Yet life is messy and chaotic, and often there are no clear answers to the questions we ask.
When death or loss comes, we often search for explanations or someone to blame, as if that might make the loss less painful. But we live in the tension of the in-between — a space where answers do not always come, even when we desperately want them.
As a pastor, I want to offer comfort and clarity to those who are grieving. But what I know for sure is this: answers are not always given. And that absence can stir deep anxiety and unrest.
When my own questions feel overwhelming, I return to “Hymn of Promise” and the comfort it offers. It reminds me that God is at work in and through our lives, even when we cannot see or feel it in the chaos of grief. That God is at work bringing goodness, light and wholeness — though we do not know when or how. In moments of loss, that truth can feel distant, even impossible.
Yet as resurrection people, we trust that life and joy will come. We proclaim this in times of celebration — but how do we hold onto it in grief?
The good news of the resurrection is this: the story of Easter joy does not exist apart from the sorrow and pain of Good Friday and Holy Saturday. As people of Easter, we do not deny suffering — we carry it alongside hope.
Even when life does not make sense. Even when questions remain. Even when grief lingers. I am still comforted:
“In our end is our beginning
In our time, infinity
In our doubt, there is believing
In our life, eternity
In our death, a resurrection
At the last, a victory
Unrevealed until its season
Something God alone can see.”
