By Nathaniel Marino
In my previous post I walked us through a biblical theology of life and death, grief and hope, and presented several exhortations about how this theology should rightly reorient the ways we encounter and understand loss, grief, and hope. In this final post I’d like to share a personal story about how this kind of theology has framed and grounded my own experience with the loss of my father, the grief that followed, and the hope that I stood on then and continue in till today.
Where Hope Met Me
My dad was the most foundational person the Lord placed in my life from the very beginning. He was as intellectually sharp as they come—the kind of person who had knowledge about almost anything. But more than his intellectual prowess was his wise character, which was, I think, his most formative influence in my life. I remember that he began pressing me toward reasoned thinking when I was very young, perhaps about 7 years old if not earlier. I can’t ever remember a time he talked down to me—condescending to a child’s level of understanding. He spoke to me as an adult in both demeanor and candor. He asked me questions and probed me to reflect on the points he and I were making in the conversation. Some of my greatest memories of time with my dad were sitting and talking for hours in our living room, him rocking softly in his recliner with his legs crossed and me sitting on one of the other couches. We had the kind of relationship where raw, unfiltered thought was welcome and where ideas were met with critical but always warm consideration.
In 2021, on a Saturday evening in August, I get a phone call from my mom at 11pm. My wife is in the bathroom getting ready for bed and I’m sitting on the couch in the living room. It’s unusual to get a call from my mom this late but I think it’s probably just something she needs to ask me real quick. I pick up the phone to the sound of her wailing as she cries out, “Dad’s dead!”
The drive down from Houston to my hometown in South Texas that night is the longest 3-hour drive I think I’ve ever felt. God how I wish in this moment I were living just down the street or had the power of teleportation. Instead, I have to endure a grueling long drive in the middle of the night reeling from the reality that my dad is gone and that my mom is sitting in the house alone. “Why God?” I ask at the beginning of that drive. Now if I could put into words what the Holy Spirit is speaking to my heart in that moment it would be this: “He is with Jesus, his suffering is over, and you will see him again at the resurrection.” My entire soul shifts right there from grief descending to despair to grief overshadowed with hope. As my wife and I continue the drive south we listen to hymns the whole way and I cannot tell you how singing the words of “It is Well With My Soul” and “Because He Lives” is renewed in me. In that moment I can now lift up glorification to the Lord with those sweet and solemn words in a way I have been unable to before. Perhaps my dad having died is somehow part of God’s glory and my good.
When we finally arrive, I find my mom devastated and in disbelief. She keeps repeating that he had just gone to sleep and then he wouldn’t wake up. I’m in shock as well, but I’m trying to hold it together right there. I just hold her while she weeps. After an hour or so, she starts to calm down a little. I lift her face in my hands and tell her to remember that dad is with Jesus right now. It is a wonder to witness in her—what is perhaps the same experience I had 3 hours earlier—a complete shift in her demeanor that I can only describe as her grief moving from despair to hope. She now has a look of assurance and comfort in her eyes through the tears.
She remembered what she believed: those who love Jesus will pass through death into his presence. And my dad loved Jesus.
Despite the pain, the grief, and the loss we had hope. Not later after the grief lessened, but right there in the midst we had hope and joy. Now the grief didn’t suddenly evaporate in the moment or even in the days and weeks after. My heart was broken. And at the same time Jesus was holding it together, filling it with his peace, his joy, and his comfort. The truths I had long held and rehearsed about life and death, grief and hope, had been forming me and building me up to face something as unimaginable as losing my dad. The shift from despair to hope wasn’t something I mustered within myself—it was the active presence of realities I already believed: Christ’s victory over death, the resurrection of those who love him, and the goodness of God even in suffering. The words I spoke to my mom were not improvised comfort; they were the gospel we have always believed and still believe. The grief was real and the lament was honest, but neither tipped into hopelessness because the Christian framework underneath them held their weight.
From My Life to Others
In the season following my dad’s passing the grief was still present and heavy. And it would come in waves: a sorrowful phone call from mom, the impulse to call my dad with news, the conversations in the living room that will not happen anymore. What changed was not the grief itself but how I coped with grief. I never despaired because I know that the resurrection remains true regardless of how I felt any given day. I will see my dad again—his death was not the end of the story. I am certain of what the future is, that I will see him beside our savior at the end of all things. And I continually remember this truth and remind my mom and all others who have lost a loved one in Christ—as Christ lives, so shall all those who know him.
Several months later I shared this very testimony at one of my university’s student convocations. I felt moved by the Spirit to be a witness to the gospel through my personal testimony of loss, grief, and hope. I exhorted the students to let the testimony of my dad’s death prompt them to examine their own lives in the light of Christ’s death and resurrection. Death is not the end for Christians, but we will overcome it because Christ has achieved the victory over sin and death. The climactic statement I made was,
I’m not worried about my dad, he’s good. I’m worried about you. If by my dad’s death some of you would be saved, then praise God for his goodness in taking my dad. I want to see you with me and my dad, worshipping Jesus together.
I didn’t want my hope to be reserved privately but to be witnessed publicly. I wanted this biblical theology to move outward from my life into others.
A couple of years after I gave that message, a student watched the recording and wrote a reflection—an excerpt of which I had the privilege of reading:
To understand his father’s story, you have to understand the gospel. Since death is the punishment for sin, and Jesus never sinned, death had no claim over him. Death could not hold him because he deserved eternal life. … I always thought that death had no claim over him just because he was God. That is probably partially true, but it makes sense that death had no claim over him because the one thing that gave death claim over humans is sin, which Jesus never did. That is so fascinating. God uses our hard things to give us a testimony for everyone else.
This theology of loss, grief, and hope is not just a personal reorientation but a witness for the entire body of Christ and the watching world. Death is the enemy, but Jesus has conquered death. We grieve, but we grieve differently, standing on the hope of Christ and the resurrection.
A robust theology of life and death, grief and hope does not make loss painless but bearable, meaningful, and even generative. The goal is not to simply understand these truths but to inhabit them and be formed by them. We should be anchored in the truth that our hope is in nothing other than Jesus Christ, and that when death arrives it has already been defeated—the darkness of loss and grief no longer has dominion but has given way to the light of life that is Christ. Through loss and grief, it is well with my soul; and because he lives, I can face tomorrow.
Nathaniel (Nate) Marino, MA, is Assistant Professor of Psychology at Houston Christian University, with graduate degrees in Research and Experimental Psychology (Rutgers University–Camden) and Theological Studies (Houston Christian University). His research centers on social and personality psychology, with particular focus on moral cognition and behavior and the development of character and virtue. He is also deeply interested in the philosophical and methodological foundations of modern psychology, particularly in reframing them through a distinctly Christian worldview. Flowing from this, Nate is committed to pursuing psychological inquiry that is Christ-centered and biblically and theologically grounded. In future work, he hopes to explore how a Christ-centered psychology might shape Christian culture and church life, including discipleship, spiritual formation, church governance, evangelism, and practical theology.
