A Bundle of Myrrh

We lost a son during Christmas. During this time I continued to play the music of the season. I will be honest, there were moments it was hard to hear the tidings of great joy, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given.”

But it was this reading I had read from December 30th, the day we knew we had lost our new son, that God used to give me the great comfort of the gift of His own Son.

On the remembrance of the Baptism of our Lord.

“This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

With these words he says to us nothing other than this: There I give to you all my grace, love and blessing, which I have in my heart and my power. In order that you may not and cannot doubt it in your minds, I offer you here – not Moses, nor a prophet, nor an angel, nor a saint, nor a treasure of gold and silver, nor great earthly or heavenly gifts – but my beloved Son, that is, my very heart, the true eternal fount of all grace and good, which no angel nor any creature in heaven and on earth can fathom.

He shall be the token and pledge of my grace and love against your sin and fear.

And inasmuch as he is by birth and right the true heir and Lord of all the creatures, so in him you will become my children and joint heirs, and inherit all that he possesses in his power For in addition to giving us his privileges and the inheritance that are his by nature, he has achieved merit and bought us through suffering and death as our priest and bishop, that we may be his chosen children, and eternally joint heirs of all his goods. What more could he have given or done for us, and what greater or better thing could the human heart desire or conceive?

Martin Luther

The righteous hath hope in his death. Proverbs 14:32

“If there were no death, sin would never die. Through death alone is sin restrained, and there is no other way of getting rid of it.

Such gracious and wholesome punishment God gives to us, that sin is slain through death. Therefore we should receive death with joyful hearts and bear it as coming from a gracious Father, as the faithful do. For our Father’s goodness is so great that even death must serve to slay and to uproot all misfortune.

Therefore death is nothing but sheer grace, yes, even the beginning of life.

For since it ministers to the restoration of the soul, our bodily system and all that is associated with it, such as illness, danger, pain, and labor, must also serve for our good, so that we could desire nothing better.

For Adam must die and decay before Christ can completely rise and that begins with the life of repentance and is perfected through death. Therefore death is a wholesome thing to all who believe in Christ, for all that is born of Adam death brings to decay and dust, that Christ alone may abide in us.”

Martin Luther

We buried Ebenezer today. Pastor Berndt did a short rite and blessed his remains. Phil placed his little box into the vault in the ground. The frozen winter ground. It should never have been that way, to have to put your baby’s remains in the ground.

This world is broken. Death is our enemy. Yes, victory is ours over this brokenness and this enemy but we who are alive here on this earth can’t see or feel it yet. We grieve the death of our child, we grieve what sin has done to mortals, we grieve what we will never have with our son in this lifetime. We grieve all that we have lost here.

But we do not grieve without hope.

What God ordains is good. Even this. In death our precious baby has been given grace and life. Though a sinner, he has been saved by Christ from his sins. He will never know sin the way his parents do or his brothers and sisters do. I, his mother, will never sin against him nor he against me. This is a soothing comfort in my weariness. Mercy that cheers and warms me on this cold and bitter day.

What God ordains is always good:
He is my friend and Father;
He suffers naught to do me harm
Though many storms may gather.
Now I may know
Both joy and woe;
Some day I shall see clearly
That He has loved me dearly.

What God ordains is always good:
Though I the cup am drinking
Which savors now of bitterness,
I take it without shrinking.
For after grief
God gives relief,
My heart with comfort filling
And all my sorrow stilling.

What God ordains is always good:
This truth remains unshaken.
Though sorrow, need, or death be mine,
I shall not be forsaken.
I fear no harm,
For with His arm
He shall embrace and shield me;
So to my God I yield me.

The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

“And Samuel took a suckling lamb and offered it as a whole burnt offering to the Lord. Then Samuel cried out to the Lord for Israel, and the Lord answered him. Now as Samuel was offering up the burnt offering, the Philistines drew near to battle against Israel. But the Lord thundered with a loud thunder upon the Philistines that day, and so confused them that they were overcome before Israel. And the men of Israel went out of Mizpah and pursued the Philistines, and drove them back as far as below Beth Car. Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen, and called its name Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the Lord has helped us.” 

“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
    because the Lord has anointed
to bring good news to the poor;
    he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
    and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
to proclaim the year of the Lord‘s favor,
    and the day of vengeance of our God;
    to comfort all who mourn;

to grant to those who mourn in Zion—
    to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness instead of mourning,
    the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit;
that they may be called oaks of righteousness,
    the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified.” Isaiah 61