Need to make a menu for dinner Friday, work on my Bible study for today, and make it to bed before midnight, but there are too many things swirling around in my brain. One set of friends is excited over the birth of their baby, another set of friends is mourning their miscarriage. We all know how to handle the happy event, but we don’t know quite know how to deal with the loss, though both are equally as important. Everyone will want to swarm around the new arrival and his happy parents (welcome to the world, Cambell Ray!), but I suspect M and B will have a quieter time of it, though they may need the support of people around them even more than the exhausted new parents.

In both cases, these pregnancies had been long awaited and hoped for. Both couples were ecstatic to find out that they were pregnant. The pregnancy that resulted in a healthy baby boy would have been the pregnancy I’d have counted as higher risk. But biology, science or no, doesn’t always work as advertised, and babies that are loved aren’t always born.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” (Matthew 5:4) Quoting a verse is an quick-fix comfort, both for me and for our mourning Christian friends. May I be a more tangible comfort, an instrument of God’s promise of comfort, for our dear friends.