JESUS, YOU, ME and GRIEF
/You are probably reading this blog because you’ve experienced a loss, one, perhaps, that has hurt you so deeply you can’t even find a way to express it. Tears are readily there but words to describe how you feel just don’t come. You cry and beg and dig for answers as to why this loss has happened, why you have to experience such deep grief. But there don’t seem to be answers, making the hurt even worse. You want so much for someone to see just how deeply you hurt. Is there anyone who can understand – really understand?
The truth is – there IS Someone Who understands. Jesus, God’s Son, personally, as he lived on earth, experienced all the agony that we associate with loss and grief. Jesus, the One Who created you, Who loves you and gave His life for you, Who lives in you can see all the way to the bottom of the crater that grief has created in your heart – and He can touch the pain like no other can.
Philippians 2:7 tells us that Jesus willingly came from Heaven to earth, taking on the form of a man. In so doing, He knew He would experience the things we experience. His empathy and compassion for us has no end.
Matthew 26 show us that many facets of grief you likely experience, Jesus also experienced:
He knew betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane. He had just spent years of quality time with His disciples. He took some of them with Him to Gethsemane and, knowing what was ahead of Him, asked them to pray with Him. They fell asleep. And, it was in Gethsemane that He experienced the ultimate betrayal, by Judas, also one of His disciples. Do you feel betrayed by family and friends who may criticize your way of grieving? You’re doing your best. No one understands.
Jesus faced the injustice of a mock trial which also included physical, emotional and verbal abuse from the soldiers. They spit on Him, they whipped Him, they mocked Him. Do you struggle with physical and emotional challenges produced or exacerbated by your grief? Perhaps you can’t eat or you can’t sleep, or both!
He faced abandonment. His disciples had traveled with Him, watched Him perform miracles, listened to His teaching and witnessed His incredible compassion; yet, they abandoned Him, literally fleeing from His presence. One disciple even denied he ever knew Him. Do you feel abandoned by family and friends, once very close to you, who now stay away, probably because they don’t know what to say to you or do for you?
He was forced to carry His own cross to which He was, ultimately, nailed – such horrific physical pain – after being humiliated when His clothing was stripped from His body. Are you ever embarrassed when your tears flow in unlikely places and at unlikely times?
And, the ultimate in experiencing the loneliness grief can bring was when His Father turned away from His Son, not able to look at His body that carried on it all the sins of mankind past, present and future. Jesus willingly bearing all that sin, all that pain, all that grief was forsaken so we never have to be. Loneliness in grief is nearly a “given,” because of that feeling that no one can understand.
Well, dear friend, know this as a certainty, Jesus understands as no one else ever can. And He says to you and me who grieve the losses in our life: “I will NEVER leave – NEVER forsake you.” Hebrews 13:5
