It is a tender and complicated thing to receive the blessings that grief offers because we would rather the circumstances causing us to grieve would never have happened.
I am sure God and Jesus felt the same about Jesus’ death on the cross. Yet we know there was never a moment where God abandoned Themselves in suffering or death. God stayed present in and to the pain of crucifixion. God laid Themselves alongside death in the tomb. God accompanied Themselves to hell and back to show us that accompaniment is what God does, no matter what.
The blessing of grief comes the same way; through the sure and certain hope which comes from knowing that God is by our side and on our side through even the worst this world has to offer. Blessed are you who mourn, for God is right there beside you.
This message is excerpted from “Blessed are those who grieve” by Collette Broady Grund in the March 2023 Café online magazine. Today is Good Friday. Today we commemorate Hans Nielsen Hague, renewer of the church, 1824.
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