[In the midst of our hurting and seasons of sorrow, what does it look like to grieve well? How can we express our hearts fully to the Lord and continue to move forward, knowing that our Father is good and loves us?]
Even when we look to Christ, the One we are setting our hearts to be most like, we see that He grieved and let Himself go to the places where His heart ached. When Lazarus died, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). At the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus tells his disciples that his “soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” (Matthew 26:38). Even Jesus did not shy away from His pain.
When I look at these stories of how Biblical characters and our Lord Jesus Christ dealt with suffering, I am moved to experience my grief more fully. This world is filled with suffering. But for so long, we have glazed over our own and others' pains, becoming increasingly desensitized to poverty, violence, and the needs of this world. How could we not, when the needs cry out so great that to see them fully would honestly break our hearts? Only with Jesus can we grieve for ourselves and the world fully, for the burden will not fall on us - it will be carried by Jesus. Jesus wants to dig down deep in our mess and weep with us. We just need to give Him the space to start working.
Today’s Bible Reading: Luke 22
A Moment to reflect:
1. Would you consider yourself sensitive to the pain of others around you; sensitive to the needs worldwide?
2. Are there ways that you've become desensitized, how so and why do you think so? How can you give Jesus room to work in your heart?
3. Take some time to pray and ask the Lord to show you an action step you can take to help sensitize your heart. Perhaps it's listening to a neighbor share a hardship they're experiencing, helping a family member in need, volunteering at a summer event, maybe it's something more global?
By Kaelah Byrom- an excerpt from For Such A Time As This: Walking Through Crisis *A moment to reflect is added for this post.
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