I’m borrowing some of this from Jerry Kieschnick’s weekly blog.

Someone wrote:

Grief, I’ve learned, is really just love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot. All of that unspent love gathers up in the corners of your eyes, the lump in your throat, and in that hollow part of your chest. Grief is just love with no place to go.

I’ve thought of death as leaving a hole in our lives.  The story of our life together stops, often ending without an ending. I walk through the cemetery and certain people are often present standing by or caring for a grave.  We run into a situation and that person isn’t present to lend an ear and offer some advice.  Though, as we confess in the Apostles Creed, we believe, “in the resurrection of the dead and the life everlasting,” we simply learn to live with our grief – our love which has no place to go.

However, St. Paul tells us grief does have hope in Christ.  I Thess. 4:14,17, for since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep…so we will always (together) be with the Lord.

As LSB hymn 606 sings, “I lay my griefs on Jesus, My burden and my cares, He from them all releases; He all my sorrows shares.”