This month we celebrate two holidays, All Saints Day and Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is about gratitude for all we have, and All Saints is about mourning all we’ve lost. Upon first glance these celebrations couldn’t have less to do with one another. Yet all of us have occasion to both mourn and to be grateful, we all have, and we have all lost.
Holy Scripture is filled with powerful stories which show to us how God is at work in every aspect of life. In the book of Job we hear of a man who like us has had, and who has lost. For a man of his time Job seems to have had it all, wealth family, the favor of God and his protection, but he loses it all. His children die tragically, his health fails, the only people who speak with him make matters worse. The story of Job’s life represents the pinnacle of tragedy. Perhaps the most tragic part of the story is that we are able to identify with it in our own lives. Like Job we are blessed with much and we also lose those whom we love.
Job is an exceptionally faithful man. When Job learns of the death of his children he speaks from his faith in God saying “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Job 1:21 Somehow Job is able to see, even in the moment of grief and loss, the hand of God at work for good. Job is able to see through the tears that loss is a proof of God’s providence and care, for we can only lose that which we have been given and we will only mourn losing that which is valuable to us. By faith even mourning can become a cause for gratitude to God. In this way perhaps these celebrations belong alongside each other for us Christians. We have much for God has given so much to us. And we rightly mourn the loss of gifts so great.
Like Job we who have lost the most precious of gifts, the ones we have loved in this life, keep looking with gratitude to God remembering that death will never be the end. Job was a Christian like you and me. Job looked to God to provide a redeemer who would even after death restore the gift of life, and make right all that is wrong in this life. The one he only knew as “Messiah” we know as Jesus. He is the resurrection and the life, the one whom Job looked forward to as he proclaimed hopeful truth that is yours in Christ. “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself…” Job 19:25-27a
So let us mourn and celebrate, let us laugh and cry together, and by faith in Christ let us walk together in hopeful expectation that even if all were lost, God still has more for us.
In Christ,
