Grief and Hope in Stubborn Tension
Author: Daniel Owens, PhD
April 04, 2025
Editor’s note: For our fifth blog post of Lent, Pastor Daniel examines what it means to let grief and hope coexist in our hearts.
Last summer, Taras Dyatlik buried his 33-year-old younger brother, Andriy, who was a Ukrainian army doctor and a faithful believer in Jesus. Andriy was killed by Russian fire. This year, on Ash Wednesday, Taras, a Ukrainian theologian colleague, shared a Facebook post that stirred my heart.
Entitled, “A Theology of Grief from Ukraine’s Holy Saturday,”1 Taras shares a letter he wrote to his deceased brother. The blog post and letter remind us that grief and hope can coexist in awkward tension.
Taras begins his post with a profound statement: “As Ukrainians, we now dwell in the space of Holy Saturday…. that tense, suspended time between crucifixion and resurrection. We have buried our loved ones, yet we stubbornly await the dawn that seems impossibly distant.”
For most of us, Holy Saturday is awkward—should we be sullen, or should we watch a movie or go bowling to pass the time until Easter Sunday? I find it hard to sustain grief over any length of time. But Ukrainians, many of whom are brothers and sisters in Christ, are living in a sustained season of grief.
Grief is awkward. In his letter to Andriy, Taras confesses: “The psalmist wrote of waters that overwhelm the soul…. I now understand this not as a metaphor but as a lived reality. My theology has become embodied in tears….”
This confession reveals something profound: that experience validates and deepens our theology. Michael Bird calls experience the validating norm of theology,2 confirming the truth of Scripture to our hearts in a way that mere abstract familiarity cannot. Grief for Christians should be awkward, because we stand between death and resurrection, mourning our losses while stubbornly looking forward in hope of restoration.
This is what makes the incarnation of Jesus Christ so important. Jesus experienced the awkwardness of grief after the death of Lazarus in John 11. When Jesus came to Bethany, he met Martha, who said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 21, emphasis added). He reassured her with the hope of the resurrection, that he is “the resurrection and the life” (v. 25). Then he met Mary, and she said the same thing as her sister: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died” (v. 32). No doubt Jesus felt the sting of their rebuke, “Lord, if you had been here….” But he was there, and he did not rush to call Lazarus from the tomb. First, he wept (v. 35). Then he called Lazarus to life again.
In our awkward impatience with suffering, we sometimes rush ahead to get to the hope while ignoring the grief meant to drive us closer to God. When we do, we miss out on the blessing available to those willing to let grief and hope coexist in our hearts, at least for a while.
Taras finishes his letter to Andriy with this passage:
Until we meet again in the fullness of the Kingdom, I remain your brother in both flesh and spirit…. Like the disciples after Christ’s ascension, I gaze between two worlds… honoring your absence here while trusting your presence there… This is our family’s Holy Saturday: suspended between crucifixion’s grief and resurrection’s promise…. We will carry your memory and hope as we continue our journey on this Silent Planet….
May we, like Taras, and even more like Jesus, learn to live suspended between grief and hope.
Daniel Owens is NCC’s Pastor of Discipleship.
Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash.
1 Taras M. Dyatlik, “A Theology of Grief from Ukraine’s Holy Saturday,” Being Human | ???? ??????? (blog), March 12, 2025, https://dyatlik.blog/2025/03/12/2038/.
2 Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 100.
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