Sit With Them
“Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.” — Romans 12:15 (CSB)
Paul gives one of the shortest and hardest instructions in all of his letters right here. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. It sounds simple enough to fit on a coffee mug. Try doing either one honestly and you'll find out how expensive it is.
Rejoicing with somebody else's good news requires envy to die. Weeping with somebody else's bad news requires self-protection to die. Most of us are better at neither than we'd like to admit.
The weeping half is usually harder. When somebody's in pain, everything in us wants to fix it. We reach for a solution, a silver lining, a verse, or an explanation for how this is going to work out for good.
Those things may all be true. They're just not what a grieving person needs in the first week, and offering them too early feels less like comfort and more like being handed a schedule for when your grief should be over.
Job's friends got a great deal wrong, and we've made them a punchline for it. But they got the first part exactly right. When they arrived and saw how bad it was, they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and said nothing. Their disaster started when they opened their mouths.
That's the ministry of presence, and it's one of the most powerful things a human being can offer another human being. It costs you time and comfort and the illusion that you're helping. It's worth all three.
The community of hope isn't a community that pretends pain doesn't exist. It's a community willing to walk into somebody else's pain and stay there.
Think of somebody in your life who's grieving. Don't wait until you know the right thing to say, because you never will. Reach out today just to say you're there. You can stay comfortable at a distance, or you can sit down in the ashes with them.
Prayer
Lord, give me courage to enter the pain of the people around me instead of keeping a safe distance from it. Teach me the ministry of presence. Help me hold my tongue when silence is kinder than an answer, and help me stay when staying is inconvenient. Let somebody be less alone today because I showed up. In Jesus' name, Amen.
Paul gives one of the shortest and hardest instructions in all of his letters right here. Rejoice with those who rejoice. Weep with those who weep. It sounds simple enough to fit on a coffee mug. Try doing either one honestly and you'll find out how expensive it is.
Rejoicing with somebody else's good news requires envy to die. Weeping with somebody else's bad news requires self-protection to die. Most of us are better at neither than we'd like to admit.
The weeping half is usually harder. When somebody's in pain, everything in us wants to fix it. We reach for a solution, a silver lining, a verse, or an explanation for how this is going to work out for good.
Those things may all be true. They're just not what a grieving person needs in the first week, and offering them too early feels less like comfort and more like being handed a schedule for when your grief should be over.
Job's friends got a great deal wrong, and we've made them a punchline for it. But they got the first part exactly right. When they arrived and saw how bad it was, they sat down on the ground with him for seven days and said nothing. Their disaster started when they opened their mouths.
That's the ministry of presence, and it's one of the most powerful things a human being can offer another human being. It costs you time and comfort and the illusion that you're helping. It's worth all three.
The community of hope isn't a community that pretends pain doesn't exist. It's a community willing to walk into somebody else's pain and stay there.
Think of somebody in your life who's grieving. Don't wait until you know the right thing to say, because you never will. Reach out today just to say you're there. You can stay comfortable at a distance, or you can sit down in the ashes with them.
Prayer
Lord, give me courage to enter the pain of the people around me instead of keeping a safe distance from it. Teach me the ministry of presence. Help me hold my tongue when silence is kinder than an answer, and help me stay when staying is inconvenient. Let somebody be less alone today because I showed up. In Jesus' name, Amen.
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