“For this slight and momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:17-18

It is truly a wonder of wonders: that God grieves with us and feels our pain deeper than we do. Our God does not watch us from heaven unaffected by the suffering and pain we feel on earth. He walks beside us, holds our hand, cries with us, and dwells in our heart of hearts. He knows more intimately than anyone the sting of death, the burden of loss, the agony of grief, the darkness of temptation, the loneliness of betrayal, the dismay of tragedy. He knows because He’s lived it all. He knows because He chose to live and love people who reject and despise him. He knows because he made his home in the hearts of people who suffer, to redeem and save those souls from darkness.

“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… Jesus wept. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” John 11: 33, 35

These people mourned the death of Lazarus for four days, and not once did Jesus tell them to quit mourning or consoled them by saying that all would be made right in the end. Earlier on, Martha confessed to Jesus that she knew he would rise again in the resurrection on the last day. She was hopeful and knew the truth, yet still mourned. And Jesus, who IS the hope and the truth mourned with her. He was moved and troubled by their sorrow, and he himself was full of sorrow too.

When we grieve, God grieves more, because he knows more deeply than any of us how this world is not what it was supposed to be. He knows the depravity and sorrow of mankind and all that was lost because He knew Eden. He knows that most will reject Him, and spend eternity without Him, which grieves his heart more than any grief we could possibly know. So he is moved by compassion. His delight is being with us and in us. To know our inmost being; the evil and the redeemed parts of us. He chose to know us so that he could save us, and he promises a life in heaven full of perfect joy and peace.

Therefore we can have confidence and an unshaken hope in Christ because he promises that he will deliver us from affliction and despair. He promises that “as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor. 1:5). He gave us His Spirit as a guarantee that he will deliver us and set all things right again.

By Sarah Lindsey