Job 1:20-21“At this Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.’”

What sets God’s people apart is not that we have become unfeeling. That would be a bad thing. Tearing your robe and shaving your head were ancient ways of expressing grief. Like crying, which Job likely also did, they were ways of releasing the sad emotions. It bothered Job to see all that he had worked so hard for, his little agricultural empire, disappear in a day, and rightly so. That is no criticism of him. It pained and grieved him that his ten children were dead. Because he loved them, this was right.

Before I conduct a funeral today, I often remind the grieving family that their tears are not a bad thing. They honor the dead. They are a reflection of the love they shared. They say good things about the relationship that has been lost, if only temporarily. They tell the truth. Losing people we love is supposed to feel bad. The same goes for the lesser losses we suffer in life: a failed business, a lost job, stolen property, homes destroyed by storms or fire. God doesn’t expect us to be happy about such things. He didn’t make us rocks and stones. We have hearts, and we are made of flesh.

But Job didn’t wallow in his sadness, staring at his losses and nothing else. He redirected his attention to God. He looked at the greater relationship in his life, and in worship he let God help him with his perspective and renew his hope.

First, worship gave Job a better view of himself and his condition. “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.” We come into the world without this huge collection of stuff, and we will leave our whole pile behind when we go. It wasn’t ours in the first place, and it isn’t ours to keep. Sooner or later, we have to let it all go. And yet God manages to feed us, and keep us warm, and keep us alive.

More important, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.” The Lord gave. From Creation to Judgment Day, from the opening verses of Genesis to the closing prayer of Revelation, this is the God we see. He is the Lord who gives. The central concept of all Christianity is not morality or obedience or goodness. It is the gift-giving love of the God who made us, and then saved us. We call it “grace.” “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life,” Jesus told Nicodemus one dark Judean night. “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord,” Paul wrote the Christians in Rome. These are some of God’s gifts. And while they may not entirely remove the loss we feel at sad times, they certainly help us to get some perspective. Even what “the Lord has taken away” does not remove his gifts, just some items he lent us for our short journey on the way home to him.

As the grateful recipients of God’s gifts, we learn to cope with our losses by turning to worship and praising God for them. It’s what we do at a truly Christian funeral, not one of these sad memorials that do nothing but tell stories about the deceased and make us dwell on what we lost. I’m talking about a service where we sing “Amazing Grace” and mean it, where the preacher directs our eyes to the cross, and the empty tomb, and the peace of heaven and the promise of bodies raised again from the dead.

It is what we do week in and week out, when, after another week of “Life is pain,” we gather with our family of faith to be encouraged, and to hear that our sins are forgiven, and to meet our Savior for a little taste of his grace in his supper, and to be sent home with God’s blessing ringing in our ears.

God has given these coping tools to each of his sons and daughters by faith. Put them to use like Job, and you will find reason to praise God even in the midst of pain or loss.