The Weight of What Is Gone: A Theology of Loss

There are days when absence barks louder than presence.

Loss is not a chapter we choose, yet it writes itself into the margins of our lives. It is in silence as you enter a space, follow routine, or go to say good morning or good night. We do not invite grief, but she enters anyway, barefoot and solemn, bringing with her a strange kind of wisdom that burns before it blesses.

The theology of loss is not tidy. It is not a doctrine to be memorised or a creed to be recited. It is more like a psalm: part lament, part longing, part protest, wholly holy. It echoes Job’s cry from the ash heap and Mary’s silence beneath the Cross. It finds its centre in a God who does not remain distant from sorrow, but bleeds.

There is no resurrection without Good Friday. No empty tomb without a stone first sealing the dark. And what darkness there can be!

To lose is to become aware that we are not our own.  That all we love, all we are, is gift. And perhaps this is why it hurts so much. For in loss we are reminded that we are creatures of dust and breath, of love and finitude. We ache because we have loved. And we continue to love even when what we love is gone. It is the Holy Saturday of moments, when hope feels buried and God seems silent.

The theology of loss calls us not to deny pain, but to dwell in it honestly, trusting that Christ walks even here. In the shadowed valley, in the empty bed, in the unused lead, and the tail that no longer wags. The Incarnation tells us that God became flesh not just to preach and to heal, but to weep. To lose. To be broken. As people we are made to love and so we are made to grieve.

Loss is a teacher none of us want, yet it reveals a sacred truth: the world is not ours to control. But it is ours to love. And when we love, we risk. The deeper the love, the deeper the grief. But also: the deeper the grace.

So we sit with loss not as those without hope, but as those who carry wounds that are being slowly transformed, not erased, but transfigured. Scars remain, but they shine.

And we will see that loss, though cruel and real, is not the final word.

Love is.