Today we are mourning the death of the newborn daughter of Dan and Marceline, close friends of my brother and sister-in-law.  Baby Reagan was born yesterday afternoon with major health complications and sadly passed away today.  You can read their story here.  

As this dear family adjusts to life turned upside down, please pray for God’s grace to carry them.  Below is an excerpt from a book written by Andrew Murray, Raising Your Children for Christ. It comes from a chapter which deals with the death of a child.  Murray’s words are comforting, truthful, and lead us to see an occurrence even as tragic as this through God’s eyes.

In God’s great school of tribulation there are many classes.  In the section where God trains parents, there is one room which everyone greatly fears to enter.  Many, as they are led into it, are seen struggling and murmuring.  As its darkness closes in over them, they almost refuse to believe that God is love.  Many pass through it and come out of it without receiving any divine comfort.  They did not know why they were there.  They did not wait silently to receive the teaching and the blessing of Jesus.  Others, who entered trembling, can testify that it was the death of a little one that first led them truly to know Jesus…

What is the comfort Jesus gives?  He leads from the visible to the invisible.  Where we see only death, He speaks of life.  He comes to rouse us to faith and to reveal Himself as the living and life-giving One.  “Weep not; she [Jairus’ daughter from Luke 8:52] is not dead, but asleep.”  With these words Jesus draws near to the lifeless form of each little one over whom a mother’s bursting heart is weeping.  He reminds her that death has been conquered, and the loved one is not dead in the terrible meaning which sin gave that word.

Your little one is not dead.  Judge not by sight.  There is a better life than the life of this earth–the eternal life in which God dwells.  Eternal life and the glory in which it shall be fully manifested is something that has not entered the human heart.  In the same way, this sleep is something that passes knowledge.  We only know for certain that it is a most blessed rest, rest in the bosom of Jesus.  We are comforted to know that our little one, whom Jesus took into His covenant, is now resting with Him.