The Precise Reason We May Rejoice In Our Grief

My wife’s photo, she calls Last Light

LET’S use a different word than suffering: grief — it’s the effect of loss, and suffering essentially is the condition of grief.

The reason we may rejoice in our grief is this. There is only one real way to come into the experience of God’s Presence. The contemplative moment. When eyes and ears and heart are opened, having been pried open by the circumstances of loss, a moment when with the denial, bargaining, anger and depression there is an openness to believe God is there, that He is good, though we can explain it not, His Presence is made known to us. It’s literally a single moment when God passes by as He did with Moses. It’s the empathy we feel that no human being can explain or replicate, but just is. And, suddenly, there, in the midst of an enigmatic anguish, we sit having encountered what many believers never do, because they’re never taken to, or they commonly resist, such depths.

Anguish facilitates faith through personal crisis, but only when we believe God will meet us in our grief.

God ought to be the answer when there is no answer. And He is.

We rejoice in our grief by the fact that our lives testify to the hope that lives in us despite our pain. We have experienced the risen King and we’ve been blessed by truest conversion in His way, because He works to resurrect us, not saving us from pain, but glorifying Himself in us as we endure it with a hope that we can neither understand nor explain.

The grief we find from such revelation, however, is so few attest to what we’ve experienced. That can cause us to doubt the very miracle that, and the God who, resurrected us.

Take this as confirmation. There are others who have experienced what you have; the joy at peace within you in spite of your pain. Many may misunderstand. We can appreciate their logic. But God defies logic, and it takes faith to believe and receive. Choose Him in your grief and He will choose to come close to you.