How do you put grief into words? You can’t. Just like you can’t answer the question, “why?”. There is a depth of grief in the world I never knew existed until recently, a depth I see my dear friend floundering in, a depth I cannot fathom. How could God allow this? Why did this happen? I understand nothing– none of it. Until I went into the house of the Lord– and then understanding is not what I expect.
I knelt. I tried to bind my wandering thoughts into prayer. I spoke the liturgy. I did all the things I always do– but it was different this time. A little one, for whom a whole army had prayed, a little one had died. I spoke the words of praise, but my heart resisted. And then, these words met me: “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea… There is no place where earth’s sorrows are more felt than up in heaven…But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify its strictness with a zeal he will not own. For the love of God is broader than the measures of the mind…”
And I was disarmed, undone. In all the dark clouds of grief how easy it is to see God as somehow strict, distant. Our world puts a certain logic on us– God cannot allow it and yet be even more grieved than we. Maybe those can exist simultaneously. I do not know how. But I do know that his love is broader than the measures of my mind, and perhaps that is why I cannot understand these mysteries.
As I knelt, praying before and after partaking of his body and his blood, my mind was focused on where I had gone wrong in the past week, on asking Jesus’ forgiveness and thanking him– the question nagged though– what did that man up there on the cross mean for all the grief, for the pain of my friend and the darkness of these days? It was borne upon me like a shaft of light through cloud– of course– O death, where is now thy sting? That figure up on the cross– it is he who has put death to death, and why should my lips praise him? Because without him, that little one would not be in heaven. Without him, those little eyes would not have woken up to Jesus’ most beloved face, that precious one would not be bathed in light and glory, would not be breathing love. But he is– because of Jesus.
And the cantor sang: “O taste and see how gracious the Lord is.” And the choir answered: “Blessed is he who putteth his trust in thee.”
Amen, Amen.
❤️❤️