Throughout scripture, Yahweh demonstrates how tender-hearted he is toward those who grieve. From Matthew 5:4 “Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted” to Revelation 21:4 “He will wipe away every tear” and my favorite Psalm 34:18 “He is near to the brokenhearted and saves those crushed in spirit”, it is clear He holds a special place in His heart for our grief. Philippians 3:10-14 speaks of knowing the suffering of the cross that we may know the resurrection and power of it. In this we come into the fellowship of Christ’s suffering, but also in this we come into the fellowship of His heart.
Jesus wept with Mary over Lazarus’ death in John 11 and He wept over the sin of Jerusalem in Matthew 23:37. He also wept in the Garden of Gethsemane in Matthew 26 and in this case He asked His disciples to weep with Him. It is very clear that we serve a passionate loving emotional Jesus who is the reflection of His Father Yahweh and He is very well able to walk with us through our own grief and suffering.
Somewhere this truth has been lost in much of the church today. We are taught to “just have faith, trust God, speak life, praise Him in the storm, serve others, you will feel better” and grief gets shoved into a corner of our hearts to marinate there until it explodes out of control because we were never given permission to experience it fully and give it a voice. Why? well, grief makes people uncomfortable. When considering what the Lord says about it, clearly this belief goes against not only what God says, but His nature. He does not only want our praise, He wants our sadness, He does not only want the “good and pleasant” parts of us, but our “ugly” as well. When we give Him our “whole” heart, we give him the good and bad parts together.
Grief is primarily associated with the loss of a loved one to death. We think that unless we have “lost someone” close to us, we should not grieve. But we experience many “deaths” throughout life that cause our hearts to grieve such as financial loss, loss of a job, breakdown of family relationships, toxic relationships that continually cause pain and lack of self-worth, the loss of a child to the world of darkness or loss of our childhood and the innocence we should have experienced. For many of our black brothers and sisters, the ongoing racial trauma creates a constant sense of grief. All these are traumatic life-changing experiences. Some are “acute”, some are chronic but all cause great pain to our hearts and when our hearts are broken, our bodies, our minds and our spirits all suffer the costs of that brokenness.
The Good News today is that even though grief may have been buried for a lifetime, it can still be healed. God’s offer and promise of healing never runs out but the healing only comes one way…through feeling the depth of the pain that we have buried. We already sense there is something hidden deep within that is an obstacle to our growth. Until we grieve over life’s losses, we never really “lay it in the tomb” and only then can there be a hope of resurrection. Our healing begins with asking the Holy Spirit to dig it up, to expose it to the Light of Christ’s love and mercy so we can release it to that Light and then we shall walk in Psalm 30:11 “You have turned my mourning into dancing, and John 16:20b “My grief will be turned to joy”. #MyGodisYahweh