Lamenting with Hope: Reflections on Easter

Lamenting with Hope: A Reflection On Easter

If you are trying to avoid human suffering and experiencing how dark and broken the world is, I would not recommend spending time with refugees. Within my role as the Administrative Assistant of Refugee Resources and as an RRI volunteer, I’ve been spending a lot of time with people who are really struggling and hurting. Alysa, myself, and other mentors at RRI have had to walk alongside a student through the fallout of family violence and severe mental illness, an Iraqi boy who was completely ostracized and even received threats from his own parents because he converted to Christianity, and now, disappointed students whose parents are no longer letting them attend Reading Circle because they don’t want their children listening to Bible stories. One of those students was being mentored every week by my husband, Connor—who regularly reported to me just how excited he was that his student was improving little by little, week by week, in his reading. The student that I mentor recently confided in me that she wants to play the violin at school but is not able to, as her family cannot afford to buy one.

You can’t be a human for very long before realizing that things are not as they should be. The world is broken—it’s filled with death, pain, loss, violence, hatred, greed, and oppression.

However, even in the midst of all this struggle, pain, sorrow, suffering, and loss, God reminds me that He is actively working in this world.

The student who was enduring abuse and mental illness is safe now and receiving the care she needs. The Iraqi believer whose family has utterly rejected him has found a new family at church who are willing and eager to care for him. The students whose Muslim parents are so fearful of the Gospel live right next to my mentee and her family—and her father just happens to be an Arabic-speaking pastor. And every week, my mentee and so many other students at Reading Circle are getting better and more confident at reading, are being shown love and kindness and grace by their mentors, and are being exposed to the Gospel.

God is working to make this world better, and will someday wholly redeem it, because He loves us. I need to continually remind myself that the One who is greater than me, who loves all people more than I could ever imagine, is sovereign over all things and is at work in all things at all times. One sparrow does not fall to the ground without His knowledge (Matt 10:29). He knows and cares about the pain and suffering of all people and has even experienced the very same things. When Jesus came down and lived as a man on earth, He felt the same pain and grief that we do. He is God Himself—worthy of all praise and glory and comfort—and yet in His great love for humanity, decided to come to earth, experience all the pain of being human—the hurt reject loneliness, grief, sorrow, and loss—for our sake. Jesus walks with us in our suffering and can sympathize with us because He himself suffered (Heb 4:15). In fact, He paid the ultimate price—giving up His own life—so that we could be redeemed and reconciled to God.

The Gospel is good news for the sad and mourning; the story of the first Easter reminds us that human suffering is not the end of the story, that death and sin will not have the final say. Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-14:

“O brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in Him.”

We who trust in Christ as Lord and Savior believe that He died on Good Friday and then rose from the dead three days later. We have a permanent, everlasting hope that after we die, God will also resurrect those who follow Him.

After He rose from the dead, Jesus sent out His followers, the church, with renewed life, courage, and hope, to accomplish His purposes on earth. He equipped his disciples then and us now with the Holy Spirit so that we would have supernatural power to bring His kingdom to earth: to encourage the hopeless, comfort the grieving, lift up the oppressed, visit the lonely, feed the hungry, care for the poor, teach English to the refugees.

While my grief and the suffering of my friends and family and the refugee community I serve are very real, they are temporary. Someday, God will wholly redeem the world, and all that has been lost will be restored. Revelation 21:4 reads,

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away.”

This season of lamenting and walking with people through hard things has given me a new appreciation for what Easter signifies. After all, it is only when we see the brokenness of the world and ourselves can we recognize our need for Christ. And only when we remember the magnificent, glorious goodness and love of God displayed on Good Friday and Easter Sunday will we be able to endure any and everything that happens on earth. Not only that, but we can endure with joy and hope because God is with us in our suffering and has given us a new and everlasting hope, a new life and freedom, and renewed purpose and ability to accomplish His will on earth while we await Christ’s return.

I pray that you will experience renewed hope and joy this week as we commemorate the death and resurrection of Christ. I pray that you will not grow weary of doing good, of reciting the alphabet and reading the Jesus Storybook Bible and loving our students well. I pray that in whatever hardship you are facing, you would find comfort in knowing that your Father in Heaven holds you in His hand and will not let you fall.

Happy Easter!

Written by: Kendra Smith