When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.
John 11:33
I like to fill things. It is not my natural tendency to leave blank space—anywhere! I like to fill in the areas of my house but I know the eye likes blank space for rest. I like to fill my calendar but over the years I have learned I do best when I don’t fill it to the brim. I need breathing room for my soul. I like to fill the silences but I learned that sometimes it is best when I leave silence.
I never know what to say to someone who is grieving. Do I try to say something? Will it be the wrong thing? Do I not say anything and risk them thinking I don’t care? How much is just enough to say? I try to avoid the clichés but sometimes they feel like the right thing to say: “I’m so sorry, that’s so hard. I can’t imagine.” But all those seem appropriate to me!
A few years ago, right after my grandfather died, I remember telling one of my friends the news. “Oh I hate that!” she exclaimed. That was it. I agreed. It was just the right amount of words for her to say and it was all that really needed said because it was so true—I hated it too! It felt like my friend felt my pain, that she sat with me in it. We didn’t dwell on my grandfather’s death for a long time, but just long enough.
I am reminded of the passage in the Bible wherein Lazarus dies. Jesus takes His time going to His friends and Lazarus’s sisters, Mary and Martha. The sisters don’t understand what took so long. Why didn’t Jesus come quickly? Didn’t He care? Martha says as much to Jesus when he arrives. (You have to love that about Martha—say what you will about her but you never have to wonder what is going through her mind!). Jesus tells Martha that Lazarus was just resting which probably had her scratching her head because they knew Lazarus was dead—they had put him in the ground themselves! But then Jesus weeps. He sits with the sisters in their pain. Then He raises Lazarus from the dead.
Why did Jesus sit and weep with the sisters? Why didn’t He just go and raise Lazarus? There are a lot of possible answers to this question that we will never know but part of me thinks Jesus did it because He knew we would need an example. We would need an example of someone to just sit with us in our sorrow. I think He knew that we would need the example of someone who would just say, “Yeah, this is hard. It hurts. I hate it.” and then just sit with us and feel our pain. He could have told the sisters that it would all be okay (because it really would in this case!). He could have told them He knew how they felt. He could have said and done so many things but all He did at first was sit and weep.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us,” for everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” We don’t like pain and as humans we do everything we can to avoid it. But some pain, like the death of a loved one, is unavoidable in this life. When pain comes to us, or someone we know, sometimes we just need to sit in it. To feel the pain and let it start to run its course. Sometimes all we need is someone to sit with us.
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