A Small Piece of Land

'And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.'  

Gen 35 v 3

Many people over the last few days have texted me or stopped me in shops or on the street and said 'I have no words.'  There are no words.  The pain and sadness goes beyond expression or articulation.  They, like us as a family, find it impossible to express the grief and loss of two little brothers, Joshua and Daniel, who lived for only a few short hours on 4th March 2026.  

Nothing prepares you as a parent or grandparent for news like this.  Your only response is to offer what comfort you can to the parents but the feelings of helplessness are never far away.  Sometimes our presence is all we can give when there are no words.  I perhaps never fully understood Romans 12 v 15 until we arrived in Stornoway the day after our grandchildren died.  Weeping with those who weep is sometimes all we can do. 

As the last few days have shown, Joshua and Daniel, were greatly loved and will be greatly missed.  We grieve with James and Marion.  Gazing out across the cold but beautiful graveyard in North Tolsta we lowered the tiny casket into a tiny grave.  Two brothers bound together until the resurrection.  When the service was over nobody moved.  We all stared at the grave, a small but very special piece of land.  It will be somewhere we will return to express our love and sadness.  

Our hearts are broken and our eyes red with tears.  It was a comfort to stand together as a family and as a community to weep together.  It was moving to see friends and colleagues locked together arm in arm standing in solidarity with the grieving family.  

Where is our hope in the midst of great tragedy? Can we still trust the Lord in dark providences? The answer is yes. In many ways that is what faith is. We don't understand the Lords ways but we trust His hand. As an old minister once prayed 'Lord help us to trust thee even when we can't understand thee.' That is very, very difficult at the moment. 

In his book 'In All Their Afflictions', Murdoch Campbell tells of a minister in the North of Scotland who suddenly lost his wife. As he prayed that night in the presence of friends he said 'If an angel from heaven told me that this would work for my good I would not believe him but because the Word says it I must believe it.' 

In my own fathers little book 'Behind a Frowning Providence' dedicated to my late sister he says 'we are to measure God's love not by his providence but by his promise.'  And that is what has comforted many of the saints who have gone before.  I have been particularly comforted by the story of Jacob in this past week.  When Jacob left Padan-aram in Gen 35 v 3 he could say: 'And let us arise, and go up to Bethel; and I will make there an altar unto God, who answered me in the day of my distress, and was with me in the way which I went.'  

During the 20 hard years in Laban's household, Jacob thought back to that night in Genesis 28 when he met the Lord at Bethel.  God gave him promises.  The Lord also promised to be with him and would 'keep him in all places whither thou goest...'  God again revealed himself to Jacob in Gen 31 v 13 and said 'I am the God of Bethel...'  Jacob was being reminded, in the midst of great hardship, that the Lord is a prayer hearing, faithful, covenant keeping God.  

Jacob would need this reminder as he navigated the tragic death of Rachel as they travelled back to Bethel.  A place of blessing and fruitfulness had become a place of tragedy and death.  She died at Ephrath (Bethlehem) or a 'small piece of land.'  Bethlehem was 'too little to be amongst the clans of Judah' (Micah 5 v 2).  Rachel named their 12th son Ben-oni (son of my sorrow) before she died but Jacob renamed him Benjamin (son of my right hand).  In the midst of great tragedy Jacob clung to the promises of God.  As Spurgeon says 'when we cannot trace God's hand we can trust God's heart.'  As he goes on to say of this passage:

'Faith's way of walking is to cast all care upon the Lord, and then to anticipate good results from the worst calamities....Out of the rough oyster-shell of difficulty she extracts the rare pearl of honour, and from the deep ocean-caves of distress she uplifts the priceless coral of experience. When her flood of prosperity ebbs, she finds treasures hid in the sands; and when her sun of delight goes down, she turns her telescope of hope to the starry promises of heaven. When death itself appears, faith points to the light of resurrection beyond the grave...'

Many years later another baby would be born in Bethlehem that would conquer sin and death by going to the Cross.  It is because of Jesus Christ and because of His resurrection that we as God's people have hope in grief.  Death makes us long for heaven where as it says in Revelation 21 v 4: 'He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.'  As we weep, we long for that day.  

But until that day, we as a family continue to grieve.  We pray for comfort for a young couple experiencing unimaginable loss.  But we do not grieve as those who have no hope.  Our hope is in a resurrected Saviour.  Thankfully as Christians we have the greatest counsellor of all - Jesus Christ. As Colin Smith says: ‘God gave His people a counsellor who wept with them, put the pain of their loss into words, ministered to their guilt and grief, and brought hope and healing from the ashes of their loss.’

The Lord who sustained Jacob in the midst of his grief is our Lord and the one who we cry to in our distress at this time.  As we weep over our small piece of land where we buried Joshua and Daniel we look to the God of Bethel to be our comfort and strength.  We trust that he will answer us in the day of our distress and be with us in the way that we go.