More from Piyumi Kapugeekiyana

I wrote my meditation in February 2023, a few days after my husband and I lost our firstborn son, Rex Isaiah. At the time, grief was an impenetrable haze. There is a hiddenness to baby loss in that many suffer through it silently. Yet the sheer physicality of labor and birth is such that for a long time, I could not shake the very embodied memory of my son and his glaring absence from our lives. The whole experience was a fiery dart shot straight into the tender heart of my relationship with God.

In the midst of it, a fragile hope remained. Even as I wrote the meditation, I prayed that by the time it was published, God would already have restored the years that the locusts had eaten (Joel 2:25-26) and that we would be blessed with a healthy baby. I reminded myself that those who sow in tears will reap in joy (Ps. 126:5). Strengthened by my husband’s support and unwavering trust in God, I looked forward to the day when I’d be able to pen this very blog post, testifying of God’s kindness.

When The Upper Room reached out to inform me that my meditation had been chosen, I was pregnant with our second son. Now, two years since Rex’s passing, we are parents again, to our beautiful six-month-old Tharuk. In our native language, Sinhala, his name denotes a bright star in a dark sky.

We will never forget baby Rex. But in blessing us with Tharuk, God has reminded me of Isaiah 61:3. God consoles those who mourn; giving them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.

I want to close with an excerpt from chapter five of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress that I hope will comfort anyone going through a difficult or painful season. It’s a scene where the Interpreter has taken Christian to see a fire burning against the wall. Christian sees someone standing by it, continually casting water upon the fire to quench it. Even so, the fire burns higher and hotter. Christian asks the Interpreter what this means and he answers:

“This Fire is the Work of Grace that is wrought in the heart; he that casts water upon it, to extinguish and put it out, is the Devil: But in that you see the Fire notwithstanding burn higher and hotter, you will also see the reason of that. So he had him about to the backside of the wall, where he saw a Man with a Vessel of Oil in his hand, of which, he did also continually cast (but secretly) into the Fire.”

Christian asks the Interpreter about the identity of the man. He responds:

“This is Christ, who continually with the Oil of His Grace maintains the work already begun in the heart: By the means of which, notwithstanding what the Devil can do, the souls of His people prove gracious still. And in that you saw, that the Man stood behind the wall to maintain the Fire; this is to teach you, That it is hard for the Tempted to see how this Work of Grace is maintained in the soul.”

When I reflect on my journey, I see the truth of Bunyan’s words. In the depths of suffering, it is near impossible to see how Jesus maintains the “Work of Grace” in our souls. Yet, he is there all the same; secretly tending to the fire that the enemy tries so hard to quench. May this thought strengthen every believer.