He Know Our Grief

He Knows Our Grief
by Gardiner Jones

”To ask, "Why would God allow this," or "Why is this happening to me" is neither a mark of unbelief nor a sin. It is natural. I know from personal experience with grief and deep sorrow. These questions have been asked throughout history, and we can go back to the earliest Scriptures in Job and see the same issues raised.

When someone you love dies tragically - as in the case of a 17-year old boy I knew recently, or my sister's murder - when you lose your job and don't know how you're going to put food on the table for your children, when devastating disease strikes you or someone dear to you; these questions will arise. Trust me, they will. Your situation of suffering or pain is not God punishing you for your sin as Job's friends might claim. He is not a dictatorial god trying to teach you a lesson "for your own good." God does not squeeze you until you cry out praises to him like a puppet, "Thank you God for making me suffer!" Suffering is not something we get out of by mustering up enough faith to believe our way out, and God does not choose you to suffer because you've been selected for "the honor" of martyrdom of one sort or another. While we may sometimes bring calamity on ourselves because of our choices, it does not please God to make us suffer. Our God is a God of compassion. Ezekiel 18:32 tells us, "For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone says the Lord God..." Suffering, sorrow and pain are a part of living in a fallen world.

C.S. Lewis asked, "Where is God when it hurts?" It is a question every suffering person eventually asks. Where is God? How does he feel about my problem? Does he even care? These questions cannot be answered by theology. They must be answered in real flesh and blood compassionate love. Over and over, in the depths of our despair we cry out to God, "Why don't you come down here and see what it is really like?" We say such things because in the pit of our despair we think God doesn't understand - can't understand - because he is God, in heaven, and we are not. Old Testament characters like Job and Jeremiah sometimes wondered aloud if God had "plugged his ears" to their cries of pain. Jesus put an abrupt and decisive end to such speculation. Noted author, Philip Yancey, wrote, "The fact is, God did come. He entered this world in human flesh, and saw and felt for himself what this world is like."

My favorite Scripture has always been the shortest two simple, yet powerful words "Jesus wept" (John 11:35). Here is GOD moved with grief at the death of a dear friend. Did Jesus launch into a theological argument about pain and suffering? Did he start a teaching on sin and its consequences? Did he tell his Mary and Martha to just praise God anyway? Not as I read it! He cried. How very real. How human! That's my kind of God one, who like me, knows first hand the reality of grief and pain. Yancey also wrote, "The fact that Jesus came to earth where he suffered and died does not remove pain from our lives. But it does show that God did not sit idly by and watch us suffer in isolation. He became one of us. Thus, in Jesus, God gives us... a persona look at his response to human suffering. All our questions about God and suffering should, in fact, be filtered through what we know about Jesus."

How did Jesus respond to suffering? Did he ever say "Just buck-up and endure your grief?" No! He was moved with compassion. Every time he was asked, he healed the pain. And how did Jesus respond when faced with suffering himself? He recoiled from it, asking three times if there was any other way. And then Jesus experienced, perhaps for the first time, that most human sense of abandonment: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Oh yes, he indeed knows our grief, and is well acquainted with our sorrows!

Dr. Gardiner B. Jones III holds a Doctor of Ministry degree, is an ordained minister, and with his wife raised four children. They now live near Nashville, Tennessee.

Strong in integrity and doctrinal beliefs, he has the heart of one softened by the Master.

<http://www.gardinerjones.com>