Mourning...

Unfortunately, I've got mourning and grieving on my mind the last couple days...Our community lost a great young man in a terrible car accident this past weekend. The young man had been in our youth group and was now in college...He was one of those kids that everybody loves...Always smiling, always laughing, and always having a hug and an encouraging word for others...Some of our other students also lost a close family member this weekend...The young man's funeral was today and the grandmother's funeral is tomorrow morning...So it's easy to see why I've been thinking about how people grieve and mourn, and more specifically how we, as Christ followers, mourn...

God brought a verse to my memory on Sunday out of 1 Thessalonians...1 Thessalonians 4:13 says that "we do not grieve as those without hope..." Basically, that we should grieve and mourn differently than others, especially when a fellow Christ follower passes away, because we have something the world doesn't: HOPE. We don't grieve like those without hope because our hope is found in Christ. For those in Christ, death is not the end...The grave does not have the final say for the Christ follower. We cannot be beaten by death and the grave because we are not those without hope, but rather those with true hope, a hope in Christ Jesus.

So as I mourn and grieve and watch those around me mourn and grieve, I pray that those of us who are Christ followers might mourn differently...Not that we still don't shed tears and feel pain and need to grieve properly...But that we mourn as peoople who have hope and that others who do not know that hope might see the difference in the way we approach the grave and death...Mourn, but don't mourn like those without hope, because we have hope in the person of Jesus...