Grief can be painfully lonely.
When we grieve, we mourn the loss of something or someone personal, an experience that is both intimate and private. It can be profoundly difficult to express to another person the essence of what was lost: a look, a routine, an unspoken hope, a reputation, trust. How do you express something ineffable, something beyond description?
The author of Psalm 25 names this feeling head on in verse 16. “Turn to me and be gracious to me, for I am lonely and afflicted.”
As blogger and griever Jodi Whitsitt says, “As it turns out, grief lasts longer than sympathy – way longer.” The loneliness of grief is extended when the mourner perceives that others have moved on.
Psalm 25 may serve two purposes: first, to help grieving people know that they are not alone – the psalmists understand their loneliness; and second, to help those who would comfort the grievers be attentive not just to grief, but to its persistence, and to the loneliness of those who are suffused by grief.
This message is excerpted from the Bible study “No hard feelings?” by Anna Madsen in the October 2019 Gather magazine.
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