A Grace Disguised Revised and Expanded: How the Soul Grows through Loss

by Jerry Sittser

If there is no God, human emotion collapses into a terrible relativism, and it makes no difference how we respond to loss.

We decide to be in a relationship with God. And then we discover that God, in his sovereignty, has already decided to be in a relationship with us.

Some of the best therapists I know came from dysfunctional homes. Often the most helpful people have endured suffering themselves and turned their pain into a motivation to serve others.

The living can’t quit living because the world has turned terrible and people they love and need are killed. They can’t because they don’t. The light that shines in darkness and never goes out calls them on into life. Wendell Berry, Hannah Coulter

Life calls forth life. In truth, God calls forth life. I have witnessed the results in the lives of countless others. They sensed life calling them into life, even before they had any reason to believe that life could and would be good again. They chose life in the face of death. They chose to live a new story before they knew what it would be or how good it would be.

Death does not have the last word. Resurrection does. There is reason to believe, good reason. This belief did not spare me or deliver me from suffering. But it did carry me through it and enlarge me as a result of it.

Suffering has power. But it does not have to have ultimate power, unless we choose to give it such power.

Loss assigns to us a script—a script that demands we play a part for which we did not audition.

We must learn to live in that tension—of beauty and pain, anguish and joy, terror and transcendence, joy and sorrow. We descend into the depths and are lifted up to the heavens. We experience frailty and become strong. We repent of our sins and find salvation. We die to ourselves and meet God.