Psalm 31:7

"You do not want to leave too, do you?" Jesus asked the Twelve. Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life."

John 6:67-68

Carol felt she was always the good Christian.

She read her Bible. Went to church. Even taught Sunday school. That is until one Easter morning after returning home from church she found her 13-year-old daughter, who had stayed behind with a case of mumps, in a coma.

Only an hour before, Carol had taught on the resurrection and now she was entombed in a grief from which there seemed no release. Not in three days, three months or three years.

Carol didn’t take her daughter’s death lying down. Nor her husband’s death years later. Each time she railed at heaven, blamed God, shook her fist in his face and did not go quietly into the night.

And yet today she is a committed follower of Jesus. She loves God and knows him in a deep intimacy of understanding trust.

"Looking back, grief has taught me to be honest with my God."

Everything is open to him. But still, suffering seems so unfair. So arbitrary. What’s the point of grief? No matter what deep spiritual truths it is meant to teach, our heart still cries out, "I want my child back, my husband back, my career back, my sight back, my life back. Who needs this grief?"

At one point in Christ’s ministry, many of his disciples were offended by his teaching. He knew that every step along the way there was room for desertion when they didn’t understand what he was doing.