What is grief, if not love persevering?

Vision, “WandaVision”

One of the things my son Eli (12 years old) and I love doing together is watching Marvel movies and now TV shows. One of the new Marvel TV shows is called WandaVision, and it follows what happens to the character of Wanda Maximoff after the events of Avengers: Endgame.

While movies and TV shows about super-heroes are not the most meaningful form of art, there are times when they tap into our hopes, fears, and longings quite effectively. WandaVision, while not a perfectly executed story, is largely about grief–and, in particular, how Wanda is processing her grief over a deeply wounding loss.

There was one quiet, character moment that struck me. I thought what the character of Vision said in that scene was so perceptive I made sure to remember it. He posed it as a question: “What is grief, but love persevering?”

Wow. That’s a profound statement.

Think about grief for a moment. It is something we all know and experience. Some more than others. None of us can escape having to deal with it. And we experience grief because we experience loss, most significantly the loss of someone we love. Our grief in the present is love on the other side of loss. Simply because someone we love has died doesn’t mean our love ends. For grief, like Vision says so insightfully, is simply love persevering.

Without giving spoilers, I will say that WandaVision ended on a note of hope that perhaps our grief will one day be undone. I don’t know what that means for the Marvel universe of super-heroes, but I do know that for those who believe in Jesus and his resurrection, such hope needn’t be mere fantasy but can be clung to like reality. So even though we grieve, we do not do so in despair. Instead, we cling to the words of the apostle Paul:

We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, concerning those who are asleep, so that you will not grieve like the rest, who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, in the same way, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. 

1 Thessalonians 4:13-14