The mornings were crisper, the air was sharper, and the evening shade deeper – there was a new tune in the air. The green of summer had ebbed to a close, and the countryside was bathed in hues of gold and amber. Thanksgiving was here, and with it, a new season was approaching for our household.
Tata, my father, began feeling sick in the early hours of Thanksgiving Day. I remember the exact date because I was the one who drove him to the hospital, and I’ll never forget his absence at Thanksgiving dinner. The house was bustling with family, and yet his chair sat empty. It would remain this way in the years to come – but at the time, we never suspected that. He was Tata, nothing could happen to him; he meant too much to too many people. He’d be home in no time.
Our family tread a well-worn path to and from the hospital in the days and weeks that followed. And yet, for all his time in the hospital, the doctors could not determine why my father was sick. As the shadows deepened outside, so did his eventual diagnosis – cancer. By Christmas, he grew steadily weaker, but it still seemed manageable. However, by the end of January, the doctors sat my mother and I down and told us that he had only six months left to live.
He went home to be with the Lord the following week.
The Empty Chair
Life is filled with empty chairs, is it not? Grief feels most fresh when the milestones of life begin to pass us by. Holidays, weddings, birthdays, anniversaries – these are all necessary and beautiful threads that make up the mosaic of our lives. However, it is within these that the echo of our loved one’s life begins to ring again; when all the chairs around us are filled, save only a few.
Year by year, Thanksgiving by Thanksgiving, we have moved on and yet they remain the same. Grief and hope and love have kept these beloved souls alive in our hearts, just as death secured their earthly memory in time. My father will forever remain fifty-six in my mind; that is, until I see him again and he shows me otherwise.
That’s the dirty little secret about grief: it doesn’t just go away, it lingers. With each passing year it takes on a different form to be sure, but it still clings to our souls. As we journey through this world, our grief grows with us. However, as the years ebb and the Lord continues His work in our hearts, there is a sweetness to grief that begins to take hold. A warmth blooms within the soul that, like David after the death of his child, can now say with a joyful sorrow, “Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me” (2 Samuel 12:23). We grieve, but not as those who are without hope.
For Everything There is a Season and a Reason
When a dear friend, parent, spouse, or child passes to be with the Lord, we become reminded of the truth that we have spiritual, eternal skin in the game. Suddenly, there is no room for a fickle faith. Either the Bible is true, all of it, or it isn’t. Simple as that. Either our loved ones in Christ have gone to be with the Lord, or they have faded out of existence entirely. Either His promises are true and eternal, or they are nothing at all to us and we are, as Paul said, “of all people most to be pitied” (1 Corinthians 15:19). But because the Bible is true, because Christ finally and fully secures the salvation of those who cast themselves on Him, we have hope:
“But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-14).
As Christians, we do not grieve without hope. Because of the Gospel, we have hope that this is not a life that leads to death, but a death that leads to life abundant. Within the bulwark of the Gospel, our souls can rest assured in the reality that for everything that comes our way, whether good or evil, there is both a season and a reason for it. Indeed, the Lord wastes nothing. Though the chairs of our loved ones may be empty here on earth, it is because they have taken up residence forever at the side of Him who invited them by name to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb:
“‘Go therefore to the main roads and invite to the wedding feast as many as you find.’ And those servants went out into the roads and gathered all whom they found, both bad and good. So the wedding hall was filled with guests” (Matthew 22:9-10).
Many Meetings
When the bad news of God’s wrath upon sinners cuts to our very heart by the work of His Spirit, it is only then that we can see and savor the good news: the unfathomably deep love, patience, and grace of the Triune God extended to unworthy sinners like you and I. By faith in the atoning death and resurrection of the person of Jesus Christ, we are brought in from the howling infinite of God’s holy wrath, forgiven of our sins, washed of our guilt, and given a seat at His table, unending fellowship with Him both now and in the age to come, and crowned with the family name itself.
For those of us who are in Christ, both living and asleep, our great hope is to know God and be with Him forever. From the lips of Christ Himself, eternal life is to know God the Father and God the Son, whom the Father has sent (John 17:3). Paul concludes 1 Thessalonians 4 with a similar encouragement,
“Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
After the death of his son, David wrestled with his grief until he could say, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints” (Psalm 116:15). Dear brother and sister, the Lord does not waste sorrow and heartache. If there is an empty chair in your midst today, rest assured that it is because your loved one who knew the Lord had another appointment to keep. For they were invited by name, just as you were, to sit at a chair with a handwritten place card, written by the very hands that were pierced for our transgressions. They now occupy a seat that is less a chair than it is a throne; one that shall never again go empty.
This Thanksgiving season, whether you are celebrating in the midst of sorrow or joy, set your heart on these truths. If you are wading through a season of sorrow, continue to praise the Lord and rest in the Gospel; if joy, praise the Lord all the same, and continue to rest in the hope of the Gospel. Remember the words of C.S. Lewis when he said, “He who has God and everything else has no more than he who has God only.”
Thank the Lord for what and who you have and thank Him that, through Christ alone, we shall soon meet Him and those who have gone on before us. It will be a time of many meetings; old friendships rekindled among husbands, wives, parents, and children. Lines of care and age shall waste away as we, with unveiled faces, look upon Him to whom all our praise and thanksgiving flowed here below, a stream that shall run uninterrupted for eternity in the land of many meetings.
Photo Credit: Kym Mackinnon