In a recent interview, Mark Graalman, drummer of the award-winning Christian band Sanctus Real, responded to a live comment from the audience about how loss can sometimes (negatively) impact a person’s desire to spend time with God. Mark responded to this concern with a personal reflection rooted in his own experience with loss:

As crazy as this sounds—and I’m obviously not in any way trying to be insensitive—but I think it’s actually a statement of hope. There is actually a day coming when we enter eternity with Jesus; there’s a day coming when this will all … it’ll actually be laughable. The hurt and the pain we’ve gone through in this life. There’s a day coming when it will seem like nothing compared to the glory that we will experience in heaven.*

What’s your reaction to that statement? How do you feel about the idea that the pain of loss may someday be laughable?

I’ll be honest—my first reaction was frustration and a little bit of hurt. I’ve experienced loss, and even though it was 15 years ago, some days it still aches like it was yesterday. I can’t imagine a world in which I don’t feel ANY of that pain, let alone consider it laughable.

I tried to dismiss the comment as something that just “wasn’t for me.” Maybe it could encourage someone else, but it wasn’t what I needed in my mental bank of encouragement. It was well-meaning enough; I just wouldn’t have phrased it that way.

But it wouldn’t leave my thoughts. I kept circling back to it and wrestling with the discomfort it brought me.

A couple nights later, I was praying with my five-year-old before bedtime. He has been praying consistently about the same things for a couple of months now—things he’s afraid of. He’s afraid of monsters. He prays in great detail about all the scary things that he’s asking God to keep him safe from. And I can’t help but smile at these prayers. I smile because they’re so precious in their sincerity, and I adore that he truly trusts that God is strong enough to keep the monsters away. But I also smile because I know there’s a zero percent chance that a T. rex will visit him in the night. And I know someday he’ll be old enough and wise enough to laugh because he realizes how safe he truly was.

And in that moment, it all clicked.

Someday it WILL all be laughable.

Death has been defeated. It can’t hurt us. It’s as powerless as the threat of a T. rex in 2024. All those deeply loved people in our lives who have passed on before us believing in their Savior—they’re safe and sound wrapped in Jesus’ arms and living like we can’t even imagine! And we will see them again in a place where all will be made new.

Does that mean it doesn’t hurt today? No, absolutely not. There are a ton of things in this life that cause us very real trauma. Death is just one. But Jesus came to guarantee that this hurt and trauma are only temporary.

The writer of the book of Revelation says it this way: “Look! Look! God has moved into the neighborhood, making his home with men and women! They’re his people, he’s their God. He’ll wipe every tear from their eyes. Death is gone for good—tears gone, crying gone, pain gone—all the first order of things gone” (21:3,4 MSG).

In other words, it will all be laughable someday. Not today, but someday. And that makes today ache a little less.

*Sanctus Real, “Mondays w/ Mark,” Facebook Live, September 30, 2024, video, 0:58:32 to 0:59:07, https://fb.watch/v6z9BMHSDn/.