After Leila was stillborn, I wept more than I ever had before, but I was comforted by the fact that my Savior also wept in the face of death. In his commentary on this verse, John Calvin writes, “He is as much moved by our ills as if he had suffered with them himself.” In your loss, and in mine, our Lord Jesus does not delight in our sorrow. He is the Word become flesh who felt sorrow in His breast and tears on His cheeks.

Christians are not promised health, wealth, and happiness this side of heaven. The sad reality of life in a fallen world is that we will all go through many different forms of loss: our health, a job, a relationship, or, worst of all, the loss of a person dear to us. When we experience these things, it can be hard to see anything outside of the loss itself. It can become so all-consuming that everything else gets swallowed up by grief, even the life-giving truths of Scripture.

I experienced this when my daughter Leila was stillborn one week before her due date. I began to fixate entirely on the horror of my loss: my longed-for baby had died; I wouldn’t get to feed, clothe, or care for her; my son, Ben, remained an only child; I might be plunged into infertility again; my daughter was buried in a grave; and on, and on, and on the eyes of my soul regarded one terrible reality to the next. But in looking at my loss and its many layers, I stopped looking at the One who alone could bring comfort to my sadness and light to my darkness. Hymn writer Helen Lemmel knew the way out of my near despair:

Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.

When I turned my eyes to Jesus, even the loss of my child grew strangely dim as His light illuminated the darkness. Looking upon Him didn’t anesthetize me from pain, but it did bring me immense comfort amid the pain.

The Savior Who Cares

As I turned to Jesus in the loss of my daughter, I found a Savior who was full of compassion. The Gospels record how Jesus’ heart was tender toward hurting people who had experienced many kinds of loss. One of the most beautiful examples of this is when a man afflicted with leprosy implored Jesus to make him clean. Mark records in his gospel: “Moved with pity, [Jesus] stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I will; be clean’” (Mark 1:41). This man was unclean according to the Levitical laws (Lev. 13), and therefore was treated as an outcast, with physical distance always separating him from others. But Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched His hand across the void of separation and touched him.

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