Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith,

This is undoubtedly the worst thing that has ever happened to the two of you, and among the most devastating news our congregation has received in a very long time. I am reaching out not only as your pastor, but as someone who counts your family among his dearest friends — a privilege I do not take lightly.

You may not want to read this right now. It may not provide the slightest comfort today. But perhaps it will in time. Please forgive me if what follows falls short of what you need. I only pray that something in this old story finds you, and holds you, even for a moment.

Rachel was the true love of Jacob’s life. For years she could not conceive, and in her anguish, she cried out, “Give me children, or I will die.” God heard her. Joseph was born — and hidden inside that name was a quiet promise. Joseph means to add to. God would add to Rachel another son.

Years later, on the road to Bethlehem, that second son arrived after a long, agonizing, and ultimately fatal delivery. Rachel never got to hold him, just like you, Rachel never even touched her son once. With her last breath she named him Ben-oni: the son of my sorrow, the son of my strength, the child born out of grief. Jacob changed the name. He called the boy Benjamin — the son of my right hand. In doing so, Jacob reached forward across the centuries and pointed toward Jesus, the Messiah, the one who sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, the son of sorrow and the son of strength. Both.

The child born in sorrow. The child who cost his mother her life. The child she never held. That child is seated at the right hand of God.

Joseph, the older brother, is the more obvious picture of Christ — rejected, sold into slavery, cast down into a foreign land of death, only to become the source of bread and life for everyone. But Joseph’s very name contains a secret: it points forward to Benjamin. The two brothers are so deeply bound together that they constitute, between them, a single story — and a single child — the Lord Jesus. The one born of sorrow who reigns in glory. The one who transforms death into life. Joseph had a spectacular life and a famous one. Your daughter did not see day number two. Life and death occurred on the same day. She is the most Christ-like figure the two of you will ever know. 

Jeremiah tells us that Rachel weeps for her children. She weeps because they are no more — hauled off into exile and lost to history, unremembered, and mourned by only her. Rachel mourns for them, we are told, in Ramah. Her name, Rachel, means little lamb, and she mourns for them on a hill. Ramah means height, a mound. A lamb, weeping on a hill. You know what that sounds like. It sounds like the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, bearing the grief of everyone He loves.

Your daughter barely drew a breath outside the womb. She is the daughter of your sorrow and your strength. She is the one you never got to hold. And she is seated at the right hand of God.

Rachel cried, “Give me children, or I will die.” She was given two sons. And she died. Our life with Christ is always, somehow, our death with Him. That is not a cruel coincidence. It is not a cosmic mistake. It is the deepest structure of reality — the very shape of the Gospel itself. The cross is not the interruption of the story. It is the story.

You will never have a more Christ-like experience than this one. And you will never encounter another soul who so quietly, so completely, points you to Christ as the daughter you lost. She died the day she was born. Death and life commingled in a horrific, tragic, painful, beautiful, cruciform, divine manifestation. Bypassing the limitations of this age, she was already, always, seated at His right hand. She arrived there before you, and she will be waiting.

In the days ahead, when words fail — and they will — remember that you are not alone in your grief. The Lord of heaven and earth is no stranger to it. He wept. He bled. He entered the darkness. And He came out the other side, carrying with Him everyone and especially your daughter. Jesus died on the day he gave life to all. 

With love, with sorrow, and with hope that does not disappoint —

God bless.