Content Advisory: This post talks extensively about the deaths of children. To skip straight to the theological argument at the end, click here.

“No one can sit at the bedside of a dying child
and still believe in God.”
-Betrand Russell

He’s not right, but he’s also not wrong. The death of a child should rattle our faith a bit. But I believe, once you’ve sat at the bedsides of dozens of dying children, once you’ve repeatedly seen the boundless love flowing in those spaces, belief in some kind of greater Love becomes almost inevitable.

I remember the first time I saw a dead child. It was several years ago, and I had only just started into professional chaplaincy. She had numerous congenital issues that made her appear ancient yet infant— tiny, hunched, and unusually proportioned. Her life had been short, and despite her family’s financial limitations, they had tried to give her every good experience a child should have. I had been holding her tearful mother and grandmother in another room until the medical team was ready, and when I finally beheld the child, a terrible thought entered my mind: “I can’t imagine a God who would allow this much pain to someone so small in a life so short. Still, somebody’s got to help this family, and since there’s nobody else here yet, I guess it’s up to me.” Over the next four or five hours, I existed as exactly the sort of atheist Russell describes— one who beheld incomprehensible pain and felt compelled to act whether God existed or not.

I spent some time processing that case and wrestling with my belief and unbelief. I reflected on the fact that God had been present through every caregiver there, myself included. I decided God grieved this child’s pain and death just as we did— that God had cried with the family. I may not have felt God in the moment, but when I replay those events in my mind even now, when I revisit that child’s room, I see God in her mother’s tears, in her nurse’s compassion, in her father’s desperation, in her pastor’s anger, in the devoted attention of every friend and relative who entered her room that day.

Since that experience years ago, I’ve seen more pediatric deaths than I can count, and the question patients’ families ask me over and over is “How can you do this every day?” The answer is simple but not easy: Every time I’m present for these horrific scenes, I see more love than I can possibly put into words.
Families who have given all they can.
Medical professionals going above and beyond.
People bound together through love and tragedy in a dance of compassion.
I’ve seen God use human hands to administer medications, give final baths and, yes, even close up body bags. Even if we never use the word “God,” there is a powerful force moving in these moments— a sacredness everyone involved acknowledges regardless of our backgrounds or personal systems of belief.

So yes, one death of a child was enough to rattle my faith,
while all the death I’ve seen since then has grown it.

One case in particular stands out. A terminal patient was bleeding profusely from the mouth as death drew near, and while our team worked hard to suction and stabilize and soothe, this patient’s parents stood on either side of the bed. They held hands and dabbed sweat and tucked in blankets. They were tearful, but every spoken word was an encouragement or affirmation or prayer. They had been emotionally preparing themselves for this day, and now that it had arrived, they each stepped into their planned roles. Through some trick of the lighting in that space, I could swear there was a halo around all three of them, and the members of our team seemed to fade into the scenery as this little holy family glowed with love. Years later, I still can’t read about the crucifixion without thinking of this family and their love which even death could not break. Though I know the crucifixion represents a momentary fracture of the Trinity, I often imagine the other two Persons comforting the Son in this way as he died. And here we get to the crux of this whole thing:

God too is a grieving parent.

There’s a lot of hubbub and controversy about the wrath of God, but what about God’s grief? In Christian theology, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have always coexisted in a union deeper than anything we can imagine. What must it have been like for that union to rupture? What must it have been like for the greatest love the cosmos has ever known to at least appear to falter in the face of death? What must it have been like for Father and Son to experience loneliness simultaneously for the first time ever when Death claimed Jesus? Jesus even famously calls out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Whatever Jesus’s intent here (as there are some commentators who see this as a call to prayer), I have to think God’s heart broke at these words. The Love which formed the world knew heartbreak. The mortality which binds creation momentarily bound Creator.

On Good Friday, we often talk about the pain Christ endured,
but I think it’s worth remembering the anguish of God the grieving parent.
There is an especially bitter pain that comes with losing a child,
a pain which multiple parents have described as losing a part of themselves,
and the fact that God would take on that pain and know that pain so intimately
also speaks to God’s love for us.

Arguably the greatest pain a human being can feel —the loss of a child—
God felt that pain on our behalf.
The Trinity, together before The Beginning, together after The End,
fractured and grieved that day as Father, Son, and Spirit cried for one another.

But, as we know from Jesus’s story,
and as we hope for our own children,
death’s dominion was not eternal.
Death’s power was broken with the resurrection.
And now, though we grieve still for our losses,
we also look to the future and hope.