I have come across a number of folk this year who have, in one way or another, gone through troubling times resulting in loss. So as we round out this year, I though it might be good to say something about handling loss.

So how do you handle loss? Does it leave you with a painful memory? A memory full of disappointment, negative emotion or pain, one that is like a towering monument seeking to dominate and cast a huge shadow over your life? Or have you learnt to handle it in such a way as to position you to received more not less from God?

I’ve learnt the hard way that it doesn’t have to be always like this. I have discovered that if you let it, loss, can sometimes function more like a catalyst that enables us and even pushes us into a new direction. It shuts off one pathway, forcing us to turn around and discover other ways to our destination. It’s often on this new journey that we discover how to deal with the way loss affects us as well as those around about us. And who knows what we will discover as we push out into uncharted waters towards a new horizon.

There is one thing for certain. Once we have experienced loss, life is never the same. It can’t be, but many of us fight to make it the same and end up becoming emotionally, physically and sometimes even spiritually depleted.

Friend, you are never the same and depending upon the kind of loss experienced, you may not be able to do things the way you were able to before. Our view on life may change. Our view about God can change in any number of ways. If we allow it, this change will move us into a new season of life filled with a series of new beginnings. God in His sovereignty permits and uses things that happen to us, no matter how painful they might be at the time, to serve His eternal purpose. In Romans 8:28, Paul says, “And we know that all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose”. His grace is sufficient!

Have you ever thought that God may have a greater purpose for us within our loss? This passage of scripture reminds us that regardless of our loss, it has not taken God by surprise. In fact we may even find that God through the loss, produces benefits that may never have come but for these difficult or painful experiences.

God’s purpose for us and for those around us, do not cease when we experience loss. What a ‘hope-filled’ thought! A somewhat ‘bittersweet’ blessing may await us in the loss. It may force us to find our dwelling place in His wonderful empowering Grace. It can also lead us on a journey to know Jesus at a deeper more intimate and life-transforming level. Loss can initiate such a journey.

Sometimes the grave is the pathway to an open door!

Know this, God will use anything and everything to change us and to make us more into the likeness of His wonderful Son – Jesus!

Loss is one of those sorrowful and grief-filled experiences that in the hand of God will bring a new level of maturity into our life. It will also awaken our soul to the goodness and love of a compassionate and Holy God. Friend, He does have the grace to handle life’s greatest losses and we need this kind of grace to see them through. Loss can be a grace disguised!

Awakened to His Grace!