The Weeping Prophet & Tears Today
I wrote this piece back in August 2019 but didn’t post anywhere, so this is less of a re-broadcast and more of a time capsule.
Photo by Lukas Rychvalsky.
This last week, I moved which opened exciting doors for training and ministry. New opportunities, fresh perspectives, and welcoming faces, but settling into a new context came with a deep and slightly unexpected sadness. Moving to a new city meant leaving behind an old one and all the relationships that were there.
I am not alone in suffering loss. A friend of mine is thrilled to be home with her children but grieves the opportunities she has to turn down. My uncle and aunt lost their daughter to an infection while she was battling leukaemia. Others face displacement from their homes, hatred that leads to violence, painful illnesses, and a sprawling list of losses that are in turns cataclysmic or simmering.
How do we respond to loss? It is usually a cocktail of tears, denial, depression, avoidance, overcompensation, and self-medication. What if we are a Christian? If we have an eternal hope, how can we best respond to loss. The Apostle Paul was right when he said “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us,” but just as “creation waits with eager longing” for that revelation, we also wait (Rom. 8:18 ESV). The pain remains acute.
Jeremiah, the titular prophet of Scripture’s longest volume, grieved over not only the sins of his countrymen but also the deep personal loss he experience because of his ministry.
“Jeremiah did not bottle up his sense of loss. He named the losses, faced them, questioned them, and grieved them.”
A man of both faith and tears, Jeremiah’s story is repeatedly punctuated with confused and frustrated prayers.
I did not sit in the company of revelers,
nor did I rejoice;
I sat alone, because your hand was upon me,
for you had filled me with indignation.
Why is my pain unceasing,
my wound incurable,
refusing to be healed?
(Jeremiah 15:17-18a ESV)
When the LORD called, Jeremiah prophesied against Jerusalem. He relinquished his privilege as a member of a respected priestly family and exhibited the LORD’s grief and disdain for Jerusalem’s wickedness. But the result was no reward: threats against his life, beatings, imprisonment, starvation, and accusations destroying his reputation of integrity. He repeatedly asked the LORD, why?
The LORD did not remove the hardships, but He responded with compassion even. He promised future deliverance and help in enduring through the present misery.
As I’ve wrestled with this question, I keep wishing for the grief to be brief. And I feel expected to make it silver-lined. But that leads to disenfranchised grief where hurting people are pressured to recover much more quickly than they can. It leaves grief unresolved and being expressed in unhealthy and unwanted ways.
H. N. Wright, a counsellor and a Christian insisted “The worst possible manner of dealing with our emotions is to deny or ignore them. Our bodies are structured to respond automatically to emotional stimulation. The energy that is generated when we feel an emotion must find a healthy outlet. If it does not, it will find expression in some unnatural manner.”
Jeremiah did not bottle up his sense of loss. Nor did he grow bitter or scorn the LORD. He did not silently acquiesce or blindly accept the misfortune as sovereignty. He named the losses, faced them, questioned them, and grieved them.
Scripture presents his openness as a help in resolving his struggle with the loss at least in the interim and the practice that opened his heart to the Word of God that confirmed his future hope. His endurance in faith compels me to believe his is a model of grief to follow.
My recent move is hardly the most painful loss I’ve experienced. There are things far more precious to me that have slipped away or seem like they will never materialize.
How ought I respond? Should I shed tears? Tighten my laces and plod on? Scream and object? Ignore the loss? Fixate on it?
I have done each of these at different times.
But I think Jeremiah offers an example for how each of us – no matter what we have lost – can engage with both our loss and our Creator.
Like Jeremiah, we can name our losses without fear, voice our frustrations and grief, and open our hearts to hear the reason for our hope.
We can sit with God and our spiritual family as we experience the sadness. Together – because it is together that God designed us to be His Church – we can pass through the sadness and fortify one another’s faith.
Together we can believe that the “sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”