Hope While Grieving

15 Jun Hope While Grieving

Because grief is a human experience, no one is immune.  It doesn’t respect people and can strike at any time.  It’s not something any of us want to experience, but we’ll all have to endure it at some point in our lives.  We experience grief when someone we love dies, when our dream doesn’t materialize, and when we move from one season to the next in our lives.  And we often grieve when we look back on the things that could have been:  Experiences we never got to have; people we didn’t get to love; dreams we failed to accomplish…

Nobody wants to grieve, but everybody has to.  If we don’t grieve, we’ll be stuck in the same sadness for the rest of our lives, hoping and praying that the loss we feel, can somehow be replaced.

The shortest verse in Scripture is found in John’s Gospel and it simply says, “Jesus wept.”  John 11:35.  This comes after Jesus was told that his dear friend Lazarus died.  Was He grieving the loss of his friend?  Was He being empathetic toward Mary and Martha, Lazarus’ sisters?  We may never fully understand the full context, but we can be assured that our Lord was compassionate and experienced sadness while He walked the earth.  This two-word verse seems to give us permission to grieve.  After all, our Lord and Savior did, and He knew the outcome of the story.