Where I come from, we keep our chins up. Out of fear – as if God cannot exist in the darkest of places – we quell grief. When it comes to the grief of others, we are no better.
Grief is a tricky beast we don’t quite know what to do with. Wisely, we take comfort in the Spirit, point to the Cross, lovingly offer a shoulder or a tissue. As we ought to do, we ask the Spirit to move. Then, we tune Him out as we roll up our sleeves to fix what’s broken. Worried that to say nothing at all is to halt Kingdom-work, we babble on.
The beauty of our Savior is that even in our clumsy ramblings, He is Redeemer. Even when we screw up, He invites us to try again, to look to Him. And, when sorrow shadows our days, who better to look to than the Man of Constant Sorrow?
To Jesus, grief was not some scary beast to chase off or kill. It was something to confront, something to experience – an uncomfortable and sometimes ugly exploration necessary for healing and moving forward.
No one can neglect a broken bone and expect to walk on as if nothing happened. We must tend to our wounds, and we must allow our friends to tend to theirs. We must trust the Spirit that sometimes simply walking alongside our friends is enough. We must believe that just as there is a time to speak up, there is a time to be silent.
As the world [daily] grieves, let us grieve alongside it, and let that be enough.