Jesus Wept.

Today is Easter Friday.

People will be retelling the Easter story to each other. They will be explaining to their children how Jesus died and rose again to defeat death and save us from our sin. They will sing of his sacrifice and drink and eat of the Eucharist and will remember.

Lest We Forget.

Today I did none of those things. I don't have a regular church to go to and worship, I have no children to tell the story to, and I live in a place surrounded by Christians so to retell the story to them may strike them as slightly odd.

What I have been thinking about today is grief.

Unstoppable

Insurmountable

Undeniable

Grief affects us all. 

No matter that Jesus has defeated death, we still weep when someone we love passes.

Jesus did over Lazarus.

Despite the fact that God will never fail us, we cry when someone we know does.

Jesus cried over his people in Jerusalem.

No matter that we know God will greet us when we die, we still wail in the face of our own demise.

Jesus cried in the garden before he was arrested and then killed.

Jesus Wept.

So do we all.

I have been thinking about grief a lot recently because I have had my fair share in life. I have had innocence stolen, pain inflicted, lost people I loved, been betrayed, been rejected, been outcast and defeated. I have only recently come to realise how much all of that affected me. 

I didn't take enough time to weep.

The last 6 months I have spent resting, recuperating from a life that all but destroyed me, and it is in this time of quiet reflection that I have come to understand the depth of two small words:

Jesus Wept.

In those words, in his action, I find solace. I find a God who understands what it means to have your heart ripped out, stood on and be left empty and aching. I find a Saviour who felt in the bones of his being the extent of what he had to face and who did it anyway. 

I find a man who knew what it was to be broken, and in that brokenness can look me in the eye and say with all honesty that he understands my pain. This man, who never had to know pain, feels mine.

So today I celebrate the grief of a God who walks with me.

The grief of a Father who gave up his son.

The grief of a Son who felt abandoned by his father.

The grief of a Spirit that was wrenched in the agony of what happened on that cross.

And I weep. 

I weep for all of us who have lost ones we love.

Who have known pain and suffering.

And I weep out of sheer astonishment that my God would do all this so that in our weeping we may have hope.