A woman I just met handed me a four-page pamphlet titled “Scripture for encouraging a grieving heart.” It was line after line from scripture that spoke right to me as I grieved my third miscarriage in a row. She had miscarried twins and her support came at the perfect time.
As the pages of closely spaced lines with small print in the pamphlet could attest, there are many Bible verses that are comforting in the midst of grief. However, there are three in particular that have moved me deeply, resonate strongly with losing a child, and provided many days’ worth of reflection in prayer.
Formed by God
The first is verses 13-16 of Psalm 139:
“You formed my inmost being; you knit me in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am wonderfully made; wonderful are your works! My very self you know. My bones are not hidden from you, When I was being made in secret, fashioned in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw me unformed, in your book all are written down; my days were shaped, before one came to be.”
After reading these verses by themselves, I go back and read the whole psalm, out loud if possible. And then I let it sit, and I reflect.
Lord, you knit me in my mother’s womb. And you knit this little baby in my womb. I’ve lived decades, but my baby only lived a matter of weeks. You made light and dark; you hold both the depths of the earth and the highest mountains in your hand. I can barely begin to comprehend your greatness. I can never understand your ways. Can I surrender my will and trust your plans?
Asking for grace
“People were bringing even infants to him that he might touch them, and when the disciples saw this, they rebuked them. Jesus, however, called the children to himself and said, ‘Let the children come to me and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these. Amen, I say to you, whoever does not accept the kingdom of God like a child will not enter it.’”
My sister gave me a card with this verse on it recently when I thought I was losing another baby. I had never thought of Jesus saying “Let the children come to me” in the context of miscarriage, and it was very comforting.
Lord, my children are never mine, ultimately. They are gifts from you, and you love them more than I ever could. I wish the world weren’t broken, and that I could be with all of my babies and with You right now. But this is my reality and the reality of the world — take this brokenness please and make something beautiful with it. I can only see ugliness and pain right now.
Suffering with Jesus
“And Jesus wept.”
For context, here are some of the verses surrounding John 11:35. “When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said to him, ‘Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.’ When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping, he became perturbed and deeply troubled,and said, ‘Where have you laid him?’ They said to him, ‘Sir, come and see.’ And Jesus wept. So the Jews said, ‘See how he loved him.’”
Knowing that Jesus wept both at the death of his friend Lazarus, and at Mary and Martha’s suffering, has helped me tremendously.
Lord, I know you are weeping with me as I sit here in tears. You don’t want suffering. You grieve death too. Someday, you will turn this weeping into gladness forever. I don’t know why you allowed this to happen, and I wish you had healed whatever was wrong so that my baby would not have died. I want to trust you, but I don’t understand and wish I could. Help me.
