Posts

We Do Not Grieve Alone

Image
  The body of Christ is not a theory. It is a casserole, a silent chair, a name spoken correctly. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” — Romans 12:15 The New Testament treats grief as congregational. “If one member suffers, all suffer together” (1 Corinthians 12:26). “Bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2). Isolation in grief is often a second wound. What helps—and what harms. Job’s friends were at their best for seven silent days. Then they tried to make the math of the universe come out even. Helpful: “I am so sorry. This is painfully wrong. I do not know why. I can sit with you. I will come Thursday and take the trash.” Unhelpful: “At least…” “God needed him.” “Everything happens for a reason.” “I know exactly how you feel.” Even true doctrines become weapons when they close a conversation God has left open. Practical mercy. Grief depletes executive function. The church’s gift is concrete: meals with a plan for the dishes, childcare, lawn care, estate...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Nearness of God in the Valley

Image
  The Shepherd does not always lift you out of the dark. He walks it with you. “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.” — Psalm 23:4 Psalm 23 is gentle and unsentimental. There is a valley. There is shadow. There is death. The psalm does not promise a detour. It promises company, a rod, a staff, a table, and a house at the end. Close to the brokenhearted. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit” (Psalm 34:18). “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds” (Psalm 147:3). If you want to find God, look toward the people who can barely stand. A bandage is not a resurrection. It is mercy in the meantime. The God of all comfort. 2 Corinthians 1:3–4: the Father comforts us in affliction, not only after it, so that the comforted become comforters. Your present darkness may one day be part of someone else’s survival. That is not a reason to be grateful for the loss. It is a reason not to...
Post a Comment
Location: Dublin, IN, USA
Read more

Lament as Worship

Image
  The Bible does not only give us songs for Sunday. It gives us language for midnight. “How long, O Lord? Will You forget me forever?” — Psalm 13:1 Roughly a third of the Psalter is lament. God put on the lips of His people prayers that accuse, complain, and refuse easy resolution. If those prayers are in the hymnal, they are not bad manners. They are worship. Lament is not unbelief talking. Unbelief walks away. Lament stays in the room and tells God the truth. It is faith with its gloves off. The shape of biblical lament Turn. Address God. Grief that only talks to itself becomes a closed loop. Complain. Name the trouble without varnish. “Every night I flood my bed with tears” (Psalm 6:6). Ask. “Consider and answer me.” We ask because we still believe Someone is listening. Trust. Most laments turn: “But I have trusted in Your steadfast love.” Psalm 88 is the exception that ends without sunlight—and even that psalm is still speech directed at “the God of my salvation.” Darkness addr...
Post a Comment
Location: Dublin, IN, USA
Read more

The God Who Weeps With Us

Image
  We do not bring our tears to a distant throne. We bring them to a Man of Sorrows. “Jesus wept.” — John 11:35 Jesus has already said Lazarus’s illness is for the glory of God. He has announced that He is the resurrection and the life. He is minutes from calling a dead man out. And He weeps. He is not confused. He enters the grief of the sisters and the outrage of death. John says He was “deeply moved… and greatly troubled”—holy indignation at the wreckage death makes—then come the tears. A high priest who can sympathize. “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses” (Hebrews 4:15–16). The Son took a real human nervous system. He knew hunger, betrayal, Gethsemane, the death of a friend. Isaiah named Him “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). Acquainted—not briefly introduced. You do not have to clean up your sentences before you knock. The One who hears you has stood in a cemetery and felt His chest tighten. He bore our griefs. Isa...
Post a Comment
Location: Dublin, IN, USA
Read more

Permission to Grieve

Image
  Grief is not unbelief. Sorrow is not a failure of faith. “There is a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.” — Ecclesiastes 3:4 Many Christians inherit an unspoken rule: mature believers should be “over it” quickly. We quote Romans 8:28 before the casket is closed. We treat tears as a theological leak—evidence that hope is not holding. Scripture will not allow that rule. Abraham mourns Sarah and buys a burial field. Jacob refuses to be comforted when he thinks Joseph is dead. David weeps until his voice is gone over Absalom. Israel weeps thirty days for Moses. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet. An entire book is named Lamentations. Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, stands at a tomb He is about to empty and weeps (John 11:35). If the sinless Son of God can cry at a graveside, tears are not a defect in discipleship. They are one of the ways a human heart tells the truth. Death is an enemy, not a natural friend. The New Testament is sever...
Post a Comment
Location: Richmond, IN, USA
Read more