At the heart of all euphemisms is a desire to avoid a painful reality. But here's the thing: it doesn't help. Indeed, it may actually make the problem of grief worse. But honesty is not only for the sake of those who mourn. Honesty about death is the only way to speak meaningfully about life.
It can be easy to be a fatalist. To imagine that the world follows a pre-determined plan from which there is no escape. It’s easy to look at the world and see it as one calamity after another; ruin upon ruin, a constant cycle of the powerful chewing up and destroying the weak, as a never-ending cycle of violence in which force of arms and campaigns of death will forever be used to resolve our conflicts—and plant the seeds for the next one. But we serve a God of surprise endings. And in that is tremendous hope. For we know that the story is still being written. The ending is not set. There is always room for a surprise ending. There is always room for hope.
What this means is that whatever the “stumps” are in our lives, those places where we’re feeling cut off, not only can God bring forth something new, but something transformative as well.
When Second Isaiah writes, “all flesh shall see it together,” it is a recognition that the appearance of the Lord is not for us individually, nor is it for us alone as humanity, but all living things.