My baby is with God and God is with me.
When an elderly person dies, we try to comfort ourselves with words like “At least they lived a long life,” or “At least I got to spend many years with them.” Or even when a younger person dies, we can say things like “At least I got to know them,” “At least I got to meet them and spend some time with them, even if it was too short.”
But when your baby dies, you can’t even say those useless platitudes, because you never got to know your baby. All you have is maybe a positive pregnancy test or an ultrasound picture or heard a heartbeat or felt a kick or maybe even saw their tiny body, but you never got to know them. All of your hopes and dreams for your baby were extinguished while they were still being knit together; they had only just begun to live.
All you’re left with is that gnawing grief and question: Why? Why is my baby gone? Well intentioned people try to give an answer, doling out comfortless platitudes: “At least they weren’t born yet. At least it was early in the pregnancy. At least they were young and didn’t suffer long.” But all of those platitudes fall very short of any real comfort, and sometimes they just make it hurt even more.
So what comfort is there for us if it’s not to be found in any meaningless platitude? King David is helpful for us here. David had a son who died seven days after birth, the day before he was circumcised, which in the Old Testament that would have been the equivalent of dying right before baptism.
In the wake of his baby’s death, David said: “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said “Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?” But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me.” David found hope and comfort, just as we can, by confessing our hope with David in God’s mercy: My baby is with God and God is with me.
The reason we have such a certain hope is on account of Christ Jesus. Jesus came as the second Adam, but unlike the first Adam who was created as a grown man and never was a baby, Jesus came as a baby. Like our babies, Jesus was a zygote, a blastocyst, an embryo, a fetus, a newborn infant. In coming as a baby, Jesus sanctified the womb and every baby at every stage of growth, declaring that their tiny baby lives matter to God because He came to them as one of them and for them.
Even though my baby never got to live much life, Jesus lived for my baby. In order to redeem, to buy back my baby from death, Jesus died for my baby. Because Jesus rose from the dead and lives eternally in heaven, it is my hope that my baby will rise with Jesus and live there eternally with Him in heaven. So my baby isn’t alone, my baby is with God.
Not only is my baby with God, but God is with me. Your heavenly Father knows your pain. Your baby is also God’s baby, His dear child. Jesus wept for His friend Lazarus who had died, even knowing that He would raise him from the dead. God knows your pain and your mourning. He has a Father’s heart and with His perfect love watched His only begotten Son Jesus die upon the cross.
God knows your pain and your sorrow and your grief, and so He lived and died for you too. He was crucified to redeem you from this sadness, and win for you an eternal salvation with Him in heaven. You’re not alone, God is with you.
Like David said, there will come a day when you will go to God and go to your baby. Though we never got to know our babies, to do all the things a parent is supposed to do with their child, there will come a day when we will know them. My baby is with God and God is with me.
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