Joy and Grief and Jesus
Joy and Grief and Jesus
This past Sunday, we sat in a room full of Christians and watched on the big screens a recording from this past week of a little boy—part of a family in our local church community—as he rang the bell to signify the successful completion of his cancer treatment!
There were cheers of jubilation and tears of sweet relief among those who know the family personally, and even from those who simply know of them!
We praised God for what He’s done and is doing. We thanked Him for a good report. And we acknowledged that, sometimes, we don’t get the report we hoped for—and yet, even then, we choose to praise God because we know He’s still good, even in the moments that are hardest to understand.
I was grateful for the latter acknowledgment, because it was not lost on me that this same past Sunday, another family in a different local church community (where we have friends and family) was mourning the passing of a young girl—just barely out of high school—because her cancer treatments had failed her, and God—in His sometimes hard to make sense of sovereign goodness—decided it was best to take her home.
Just a couple weeks ago, we’d gathered together with our local church community to pray for that young lady’s healing. And in a sense, God answered our prayers. She is more whole now than she’s ever been.
But at the same time, that’s not the kind of healing we were hoping for—asking for. And I can only imagine that her family and friends would’ve given anything to have her experiencing that kind of wholeness here with them, this side of eternity.
For this reason, they are grieving, because there is a loss—a significant, irreplaceable, gaping hole—here in their lives, now.
And we grieve with them for the loss of their child, their sibling, their friend...
And also, we rejoice with the family whose little boy was sent home to continue getting well...
And the one does not cancel out the other, or make either response any less sincere. There’s room for both rejoicing and mourning in the same breath. Maybe that’s why every breath is made of two parts: the inhale, and the exhale.
The late Ron Dunn used to say, “Good and bad run on parallel tracks and usually arrive about the same time.”
So how do we handle this juxtaposition? Because there is, most certainly, an appropriate way to go about this. And it shouldn’t surprise us in the slightest that this way is going to involve considering one another.
For those who are mourning and deeply, personally impacted by loss today—as we engage with them, we join them in their mourning. What they’re experiencing is hard and painful and impossible (but God!), and we acknowledge that alongside them. And that is all we do with them, for now, because that is what they’ll need most from us.
For those who are celebrating and experiencing a huge win in their lives today—as we engage with them, we join them in their celebration! We make much of it!
And in case you were wondering, this—being empathetic with one another—isn’t just my suggestion, or what I think is a good way to handle a situation like this; it’s biblical. It’s what the Apostle Paul said Christians are supposed to be doing.
Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. - Romans 12:15 (NIV)
Knowing how to respond to someone, in their losses and in their victories, is not a complicated thing, really, though it feels that way sometimes. And we might even think it’s better to simply withdraw from those experiencing big things, good or bad, or to not make a big deal one way or the other about what’s happening in their lives, for the sake of not messing this up.
But there’s a better way, and we’re called to do more. We’re called to be empathetic people, in the name of Jesus. This means we need to be paying attention to who we’re around, and what they’re going through… and then, we enter into their sufferings or their celebrations with them.
In this way, we get to be like Jesus to others. Because Jesus—God with us—was all about entering into our world and simply being here with us, so that we don’t have to go through anything—good or bad—alone anymore. And that makes the bad bearable, and the good better.
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