This Friday’s Where Broken Stories Meet God’s Grace post takes a personal turn. Next Wednesday will mark 43 years since my dad died. I was sixteen. Even now, I can close my eyes and watch that day unfold as if it were yesterday. So today I’m pausing to share one of the pivotal moments in my own story.
I miss you, Dad.
It was Friday, August 19. I’ll never forget the telephone call.
“Is this Darin? Son, you need to go home. Your mom needs you.”
I didn’t recognize the voice on the other end, but something in her words told me to take her seriously.
When I arrived home, I was greeted by a stranger. The woman hugged me. I had no idea who she was.
“My mom?” I asked.
“Over there,” she said, pointing.
Mom was sitting between a couple of family friends. Everyone was crying. Tissues were being passed around.
Then came the news.
My dad had died suddenly that morning.
It took hours for those words to begin sinking in. For much of that day, I was convinced I would wake up and discover it had all been a terrible dream. Dad would walk through the door after work like he always did.
Dads don’t die and leave sixteen-year-old sons behind, do they?
But mine had.
A Bible I Had Barely Opened
Late that night, I picked up my Bible.
I was a relatively new believer in Christ, and it was a relatively new Bible—one I had hardly opened before that night. Inside the cover, I noticed something I had written:
1 Cor. 15:55–57 — Graverobber
I vaguely remembered penciling it there. The verses had been referenced in a song I’d heard, although I couldn’t remember exactly what had prompted me to write them down.
So I looked them up.
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
And then:
“But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
There it was.
But.
Death. Grave. Sin. Sadness.
But.
Thanks. Victory. Jesus. Life.
That little word caught my attention that night long before I ever imagined writing a book about the buts of the Bible.
The night bled into morning as I read back and forth through 1 Corinthians 15. I came to these words:
“So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable.”
Death was real. My grief was real. Nothing on those pages asked me to pretend otherwise.
But death was not the end of the story.
There was resurrection.
There was life.
There was hope.
When Grief Meets Grace
During 21 years as a pastor—and in the years since—I’ve lost count of the funerals and memorial services I’ve officiated. Some were for people I barely knew. Others were for friends I loved dearly.
And again and again, I have returned to passages like 1 Corinthians 15, 2 Corinthians 5, and 1 Thessalonians 4.
They do not make death hurt less by pretending it doesn’t hurt.
They do something better.
They remind us that death does not get the last word.
That truth first became more than theology to me as a sixteen-year-old boy sitting up late with a Bible he had barely opened, desperately looking for something to hold onto.
And God met me there.
Looking back, I recognize that night as one of those places where my broken story met God’s grace.
Maybe you know something about death’s sting.
Maybe there is someone you still miss after five years, twenty years, or forty-three. Maybe you know exactly what it is to wish, just once more, that someone would walk through the door.
Scripture never asks us to deny that ache.
But thanks be to God.
Jesus entered death Himself—and came out the other side.
He brings life where death appears to have won. He brings hope into places that feel hopeless. He promises resurrection where the grave appears final.
He is, as that note in the front of my Bible reminded me all those years ago, the Graverobber.
Death is real.
Grief is real.
The grave is real.
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
A little but can go a long, long way.
And if you’re carrying grief today and wondering about the hope I found that night, I would be honored if you asked me about it.
Big Buts of the Bible 
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