It was a few days before Ash Wednesday, the day when people go to church, have ashes spread on their foreheads, and hear someone utter: Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

I didn’t go to the Ash Wednesday service this year. I didn’t need a reminder of our mortality. I had received one just days earlier when a friend of mine passed away. It shocked my system. His death triggered old trauma. But I was set to speak at an event in Calgary, Alberta so I got on a plane. 

As soon as I finished speaking, I hoofed it to my rental car and drove to the mountains. I felt like I could crawl out of my skin and I needed to get close to something God Himself had made. I wept and drove, wept and drove. I cranked worship music. The mountains came into view – sweeping and grandiose, looming larger and so much steadier than me. I could feel myself take a deep breath, and then another. 

I kept my eyes on the mountains and told Jesus how little I felt I had left in me. I told Him how tired I am of people dying. I told Him that I didn’t want to go to more funerals. 

God knows funerals well. He was the only person present at the funeral of Moses. 

In Deuteronomy 34, the final chapter in the five books of the Hebrew Torah, Moses died. Even the fearless leader had to face death. Moses’ friends and family weren’t surrounding him when he passed away, but he did have God. 

“And Moses the servant of the Lord died there in Moab, as the Lord had said. He buried him in Moab…” Deuteronomy 34:5-6 NIV

The “He” in verse six is God. Did you catch that? It’s striking: God buried Moses. 

How did God feel when He buried His friend? When He was pouring dirt over the face of the man He spoke to face-to-face? 

God knew Moses would be with Him forever, and yet He still had the tenderness to bury Him. God put His hands in the earth, got dirt under His fingernails, and knelt beside a body that no longer breathed life. 

God was not absent or distant in the face of Moses’ death. He didn’t rush through the grief in order to celebrate how Moses would soon be with Him in eternity. No one saw God bury Moses, but God deemed a funeral important enough to perform it Himself.

God doesn’t seem to be afraid of burials. I can’t help but wonder how vital He knows them to be – because death comes before resurrection. 

Resurrection is coming. We know that to be true, particularly in this Lenten season when Easter will soon arrive. We wait with anticipation to celebrate the glorious resurrection of Jesus, who defeated death once and for all. Easter Sunday is one of my favorite days of the year. 

But resurrection means that someone has died. 

Our God is not in the habit of rushing through death or grieving. He wept at the tomb of His friend in John 11, and He buried His friend all alone in Deuteronomy 34. 

He is “a man of sorrows, acquainted with deepest grief.” He knows your grief, and He knows mine. 

Easter is coming, to be sure. But Good Friday comes first. God isn’t afraid of death or your grief. He weeps with us. He is close to the brokenhearted.

And soon, when we begin to see a glimmer of light from beneath the sadness, we can hold fast to this, too… 

Resurrection is coming. 

 

Listen to today’s devotion below or wherever you listen to podcasts!

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