Grief can hit especially hard during the holiday season – all those memories of loved ones crowd in as we celebrate traditions of which they were once an integral part. Worse yet, as we focus so much on giving and receiving gifts, it’s easy to slide into a belief that the things of this world are all that really matters.

Of course, the central meaning of Christmas should undercut both our grief and our worldliness. For when God came into our world as Bethlehem’s Babe, He proved that there is more to this life than what we can touch and see. He showed us that there are more important things than mere material possessions. As He denied Himself, embracing our pain and poverty so that we might be saved from our brokenness and sin, He showed us the value of eternal things even as He demonstrated to us the meaning of true love.

But today’s passage provides an even greater perspective. For one day, all our griefs will disappear as all our goodbyes become hellos, as all those who trust in Christ are raised from the dead. But verse 17 reminds us that we won’t just be with our loved ones forever – we’ll also be with the Lord, living in His presence in a much fuller, more immediate, undeniable way. And it is the blessing of Christ Himself that will fully and finally displace all our worldly desires.

But as Paul says in verse 18, we can draw encouragement from this future reality even today. Even as we grieve the loss of loved ones, we can have hope that we will see them again. And we can even now begin to turn our hearts away from the passing shadows of this world, setting our hearts instead on Christ, Who is and always will be our greatest blessing.

1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (ESV)

13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.
14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
15 For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16 For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.
18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.