Chapter 35

Living in Hope: How This Hope Changes How We Live

Three years after her husband's funeral, Margaret Chen began visiting the nursing home on the edge of town. Nobody asked her to. She did not put it on the prayer chain. She did not preach. She simply went, twice a week, and sat with people who were dying.

The pastor learned about it by accident. He had stopped by the nursing home to see a parishioner and saw Margaret in the hallway, holding the hand of a woman the pastor did not recognize. Margaret was not talking. She was just there. The dying woman's eyes were closed, but her face was peaceful, and her thumb was moving very slightly across Margaret's knuckles.

Later, over coffee, the pastor asked her about it. Margaret thought for a long time before she answered. "When David was dying," she said, "I learned what they need. They need someone who knows they are still real." She looked down at her coffee. "I sat with him for nine days. I watched him cross over. And I came out of that room knowing something I didn't know before. I didn't know how to say it then. I'm still not sure I know how to say it. But these people in here — they're not gone yet. They're still themselves. They're still loved. And most of them, nobody comes."

The pastor did not say anything for a while. He had buried David Chen three years ago. He had sat with Margaret in the worst weeks afterward. He had wondered, more than once, whether she would survive her own grief.

Now here she was, sitting with strangers' grandmothers, holding their hands. Hope, the pastor thought, had not erased her grief. Hope had transfigured it.

Hope Does Not Erase Grief; It Walks Alongside It

Before we say anything else about how hope changes us, we have to say the honest pastoral truth: Christian hope does not make grief disappear. Margaret still misses David. She still cries. There are still mornings when the silence in the kitchen is unbearable. The hope she has touched did not magically subtract her loss. It walks with her grief, not in place of it.

The apostle Paul knew this. When he wrote to a young Greek church about their dead, he did not say, "Do not grieve." He said, "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" (1 Thessalonians 4:13).¹ Christians grieve. But Christians grieve differently. The grief is not less real. It is held differently — held inside a larger story that does not end at the grave.

This is important to say at the start of this chapter, because what follows could sound like a sales pitch: here is what hope will do for you. Hope is not a self-help program. It is not a way to "get over" your loss. The widow who reads this chapter looking for permission to stop missing her husband will not find it here. She will find, instead, the gentle invitation that hope holds out to all of us: not to forget our dead, but to live differently because of who holds them.

Hope Reduces the Fear of Death

One of the first things that happens when Christian hope sinks deeply into a person is that the fear of her own coming death begins to loosen its grip.

This is not a small thing. The author of Hebrews says it bluntly: Jesus shared in our flesh and blood "that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery" (Hebrews 2:14–15).² Read that again slowly. Lifelong slavery. The Bible names the fear of death as a kind of bondage that follows people through every year of their lives. It is the silent dread that shapes a thousand small decisions. And one of the things Jesus came to do was to break that chain.

Pastoral observation confirms what Scripture promises. Christians who have walked through the death of a loved one — and have done so in the company of real, biblically grounded hope — often emerge less afraid of their own mortality. They are not eager to die. They love this life. But the dread is gone, or at least diminished. They can hear the doctor's bad news without falling apart. They can speak the word "death" without their voice shaking.

Near-death experience research reports the same pattern from a different angle. Bruce Greyson, the psychiatrist who spent fifty years studying NDEs, has documented over and over that one of the most consistent aftereffects of an NDE is a dramatic, lasting reduction in the fear of death.³ Michael Sabom's Atlanta Study found the same thing: NDE experiencers showed substantially deepened intrinsic faith, increased meaning in life, and reduced fear of dying — changes that persisted for years, and that did not show up to the same degree in cardiac patients who had survived without an NDE.⁴ Kenneth Ring's research replicated these findings.⁵

Now, an NDE is not the only path to reduced fear of death. Most Christians will never have one. But what NDE research suggests is that an honest, embodied confrontation with the reality of life beyond the body changes people. And that confrontation is exactly what every grieving Christian has had, in her own way, at the bedside of someone she loved.

You have stood at the threshold. You have watched a soul cross over. And the same Lord who held your loved one will hold you. The fear can begin to release.

Hope Reorders Priorities

The second thing hope does is quieter, but no less profound. It rearranges what matters.

Jesus said it directly: "Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (Matthew 6:19–21).⁶ This is not a guilt trip. It is a description of how the human heart actually works. We orient our lives toward what we believe is real and lasting. If the only thing we believe is real is this present world, we will spend our hearts on this present world. If we have come to believe that there is something more — and that the people we love are part of it — our hearts will follow.

NDE research describes this transformation in striking terms. John Burke, surveying the broad literature, notes that experiencers consistently come back from their NDEs with reordered priorities: career achievement, money, social status, and accumulation become less compelling, while love, relationships, faithfulness, and service become much more compelling.⁷ Pastor Steve Sjogren, who had an NDE during a surgical complication, returned to consciousness realizing that he did not know the names of any of his children's friends.⁸ J. Steve Miller has documented how this reordering happens almost universally among NDE experiencers and is remarkably consistent across cultures, religions, and prior worldviews.⁹

I want to be careful here. I am not saying that everyone who has experienced grief should have an NDE-like priority shift. I am saying that the same God who orders the priorities of NDE experiencers can order the priorities of the grieving — and very often does. When we have buried someone we love, the size of our house begins to matter less. The promotion we did not get begins to matter less. The grudge we have been carrying for fifteen years begins to matter less. What matters more? The grandchildren. The phone call we have been putting off. The neighbor who is sick. The reconciliation we have been avoiding.

This is not pious sentiment. It is the natural result of standing at a graveside and looking back at the rest of your life with new eyes.

Hope Produces Ministry to the Dying

This is the part of the chapter where Margaret comes back. After David died, after the long valley of grief, after the slow climb back to something that felt like a life again — Margaret found herself drawn to people who were doing what David had done. She became, in the language of Henri Nouwen, a "wounded healer." Her wound did not disappear. But the wound became a place where other people's pain could meet hers, and find that they were not alone.

Nouwen wrote that the Christian minister "is called to recognize the sufferings of his time in his own heart and make that recognition the starting point of his service."¹⁰ Most pastors and hospice workers and grief companions I have known have, somewhere in their past, walked through a death of their own. The pain has been transformed into capacity. They know what to say because they remember what was said to them. They know what not to say because they remember what was said to them. They can sit with the dying without flinching because they have already sat with the dying once and lived to tell about it.

Jerry Sittser, who lost his mother, his wife, and his daughter in a single car accident, wrote in A Grace Disguised about how the loss did not diminish him — it expanded him.¹¹ The capacity for sorrow grew, but so did the capacity for joy. The capacity to grieve grew, but so did the capacity to comfort. Sittser puts it this way: the loss did not become less, but his soul became larger.

The clinical psychologist George Bonanno, who has spent his career studying how people respond to bereavement, has gently challenged the older idea that grief always damages and depletes. Many grievers — not all, but many — emerge with new resources, new resilience, and new compassion they did not have before.¹² Grief does not always make us smaller. Sometimes, by God's grace, it makes us bigger.

If you are reading this chapter and you have buried someone you love, I want you to hear me carefully: God may be preparing you for a kind of ministry you cannot yet see. Not now. Not while the wound is open. Not as a project, not as a duty, not as a way to "get over" your grief. But somewhere down the road, when the worst has passed, you may find yourself sitting on a couch beside someone whose loss is still fresh — and you will know what to do. And you will know because of what you have walked through.

This is what real Christian hope produces in the end. Not detachment from suffering, but a tender, costly closeness to it.

Hope Frees Us to Love More Deeply Now

One of the strange and beautiful effects of believing in real reunion is that it frees us to love the living more, not less.

I have heard people argue the opposite. They say that if we believe death is the end, we will love our spouses and children with more urgency, because every moment is finite. There is something to this. Awareness of finitude does sharpen love.

But I think it gets the picture backward.

When we believe that death is the end, we do not love more deeply. We cling. We grip our loved ones with the desperate tightness of someone who knows that what she holds is about to be ripped away forever. The love becomes anxious, possessive, fearful. We try to extract from the present moment what only eternity can give. And the people we love feel it. They feel the weight of being someone's only hope of meaning.

But when we believe that reunion is real — that the love we share with our spouse, our children, our parents, our friends is part of a larger story that does not end at the grave — we can love freely. We can hold our loved ones tightly because we will hold them again. We can let them go for an evening, a year, a lifetime, knowing that nothing essential is being lost.

The end is not loss. The end is transformation.

This is why grieving Christians are sometimes — not always, but sometimes — better lovers of their remaining family than they were before the death. They know what is at stake. They know how short any one earthly lifetime is. And they know that none of the love is wasted, because none of the people are wasted. Love does not go into a void. Love goes into the life of the world to come.

Hope Produces Honest Engagement with This World

Here we have to address a misconception that has plagued Christians for centuries: the idea that hope of heaven makes us indifferent to this world.

It is not true. It has never been true. The Christians who have most fiercely loved this world — who have built hospitals, fed the hungry, fought slavery, taught children to read, planted gardens, written symphonies, healed the sick, ended wars — have nearly all been Christians who believed in heaven. C. S. Lewis put it crisply: "If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next."

Why? Because Christian hope is not escapism. The end of the Bible is not the soul floating off into the clouds. The end of the Bible is the renewed creation — new heavens and new earth, God dwelling with His people, every tear wiped away (Revelation 21:1–4).¹³ N. T. Wright has done the church a great service in recovering this point. Heaven is not the goal. The renewed earth is the goal. And if the renewed earth is where we are headed, then the body matters now, the earth matters now, the neighbor matters now, the church matters now.¹⁴

Margaret did not start visiting the nursing home because she had given up on this life. She started visiting the nursing home because she had begun to believe, more deeply than she ever had before, that this life is part of something larger. Her presence at the bedside of strangers is not a denial of her grief. It is grief and hope, woven together, walking out into the world with hands open.

That is what Christian hope produces. Not indifference. Not numbness. Not a glassy-eyed staring at heaven while the world burns. It produces engaged, costly, embodied love — the love of God in Christ flowing through ordinary people into ordinary places.

Bringing the Widow Back

So we come back to Margaret in the nursing-home hallway, holding the hand of a stranger.

She has not "gotten over" David's death. She never will. There is no "over" to get to. The loss has shaped her permanently. What has happened, slowly, gently, mostly without her noticing it, is that the loss has been transfigured. The grief is still there. But the grief has become a doorway, not a prison. Through that doorway, she has walked into the lives of others.

This is what real Christian hope does in the end. It does not anesthetize. It sends.

And the strange, beautiful thing is that the people Margaret sits with are part of her hope, not separate from it. When she holds the hand of a dying woman, she is doing exactly what David needed someone to do for him. She is doing it because she knows how much it mattered. She is doing it because she trusts that one day, when her own time comes, someone will sit with her — and that beyond that final breath, David will be waiting, and Christ will be waiting, and home will be waiting.

Until that day, she walks. Until that day, she serves. Until that day, she loves.

And this is the life that hope produces. Not a life of evasion. A life of love.

For Your Reflection

1. As you look back over your grief journey, are there ways you have noticed yourself changing — in your priorities, in your fears, in your love for the people still in your life? Name one.

2. Where in your life is fear of death — your own death, or the death of others — still gripping you tightly? What might it look like for that grip to loosen?

3. Are there relationships you have been holding too tightly, anxiously, because deep down you fear losing them? What would it look like to hold them with the same care, but with hope?

4. Is there someone in your life right now — a neighbor, a fellow griever, a person who is dying — whose pain has begun to draw you toward them in a way you did not expect? Sit with that.

5. What priorities in your life feel different now than they did before your loss? What has become less important? What has become more important?

6. Margaret says, "They need someone who knows they are still real." Has your loss made you more able to see other people as real? In what specific ways?

7. If you sense, even faintly, that God may be inviting you into some new ministry of presence to others — to the dying, to the bereaved, to the lonely — what would the next small step look like?

For Pastors and Caregivers

One of the most important things a pastor can learn to recognize is the slow emergence, two to five years after a death, of new ministry capacity in a bereaved person. This is not always announced. It is rarely articulated. Often the bereaved person herself does not realize what is happening. She just finds herself drawn to other grievers. She finds herself volunteering at the hospice. She finds herself sitting with the dying. The pastor's work is to notice, name, and (when appropriate) gently channel.

Key pastoral observation. Bereaved Christians often emerge from the deepest waters of grief carrying a particular kind of pastoral capacity that no seminary can teach: they know what dying feels like from the family's side of the bed. They know what the first night alone in the house feels like. They know what the second Christmas without him feels like. The church desperately needs this capacity. But it usually does not arrive on the church's schedule. It emerges, when it emerges, in God's time.

What to say. "I have noticed how this loss has shaped you. I see new strength, new tenderness, new attention to people who are hurting. If you ever sense the Lord drawing you into a more intentional ministry of presence — to the bereaved, the dying, the lonely — I would love to help you think through what that could look like." Or, more simply, in the moment: "What you just did for that family — sitting with them like that — that mattered. Thank you."

What NOT to say. Do not, ever, say "It's time to move on" or "It's been long enough; you should be over this by now." This is false on its face. There is no "moving on" from the death of someone deeply loved; there is only moving forward, carrying the loss with us. Do not pressure new ministry. Do not say things like "You really should be using this experience to help other widows now." That is recruitment, not pastoral care. The bereaved person needs to be invited, not conscripted, and the invitation must come from the Lord through gentle nudges, not from the pastor through staffing needs.

Watch-outs. First, beware the bereaved person who jumps into ministry too fast — six weeks, six months — as a way of avoiding her own grief. Premature ministry can be a sophisticated form of denial. Encourage her gently to slow down. The grief work has to be done; ministry can come later. Second, beware the temptation to use the bereaved as resources. They are not your volunteer pool. They are your people. Their healing comes first.

Watch also for the opposite problem: bereaved people who, after several years, are still avoiding any engagement with the suffering of others. This is sometimes complicated grief (Chapter 31). Sometimes it is depression. Sometimes it is fear. A gentle, non-pressuring conversation about what they sense the Lord might be inviting them into — with no agenda, no recruitment, no timeline — can be a kindness. Sometimes the invitation has been waiting for someone to name it.

Next steps. When the time seems right, invite the bereaved into specific, small ministries that fit who they are. A widow whose husband died of cancer might sit with families in oncology waiting rooms. A father whose son died by suicide might be the first person the church calls when another family faces that loss. A mother who lost a baby might lead a quiet annual remembrance service. The ministry that grows out of grief is almost always tailored to the specific shape of the grief. Trust that. Help your people find theirs.

Finally, a word for you, the pastor or caregiver yourself: many of you are doing this work because of a death of your own. You are the wounded healer. The same warning applies: do not let ministry become a way of avoiding your own grief. The flock cannot be cared for by a shepherd who is bleeding out and pretending not to. Care for your own soul. Walk alongside someone yourself. The God who holds the bereaved holds you, too.

For Further Reading

Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer. The classic theological reflection on how the minister's own woundedness becomes the place from which compassion flows.

Jerry Sittser, A Grace Disguised. A profound, hard-won meditation on how catastrophic loss can — by God's grace — enlarge rather than diminish the soul.

Tim Keller, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering. A pastorally rich and theologically careful treatment of how Christian hope reshapes a sufferer's whole life.

Nancy Guthrie, Hearing Jesus Speak Into Your Sorrow. A gentle pastoral guide to how the voice of Christ in Scripture meets the bereaved in their grief.

George Bonanno, The Other Side of Sadness. A leading bereavement researcher's evidence-based account of resilience and growth following loss; engage selectively but profitably.