Healing Rays of Righteousness

It is wonderful to read or hear stories of answered prayers for successful surgery, cancer cured, health restored, protection and safety in dangerous storm or threatening violence.  We rejoice with all recipients of answered prayer and gratefully praise God for His intervention and help.

However, there are times when sincere and fervent prayers are not answered as we would desire, and our life is painfully shattered with grievous loss of spouse or child, and our future is emptied of dreams and expectations.  We weep, we groan, we cry out “O God, why?”

There are countless psalms that ask this same question; Psalm 10:1 – Why, Lord, do you stand far off?  Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?  Psalm 22:1 – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish?

Feeling alone, unloved, and forsaken by God, we need someone to sit and weep with us.

Sometimes well-meaning friends attempt to comfort by using biblical texts to explain the whys behind unanswered prayer and grief’s suffering, but I never found that to be comforting or satisfying.  A much better choice of biblical texts are those that speak of God’s promises to us.  It is the promises of God that encourage and reassure us when we feel alone and forsaken.

We may be crying out “Why” but we really want to know “Where” is God.  And, it is the promises of God that speak of the loving, compassionate, “present with us” character of God.  It is the promises of God that affirm His being the Holy, All-loving One who sits with us in our pain and weeps with us.

And when we sit and weep with our grieving friends, we become God’s heart and hands in human flesh and presence.  I believe God intends this to be our ministry of shared pilgrimage with one another.

The apostle Paul encourages the Corinthian Christians in this ministry in his greeting to them.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-5).

Paul also talks about this caring, sensitive, comforting lifestyle in his letter to the Romans, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn.”  (12:15).

We can learn much from the story that is told of a little girl who got home from school unusually late one evening, only to find a daddy who was very unhappy about her lateness.  He asked his little girl why she was late.  She said, “Because my friend broke her dolly.”  Her daddy then said, “Oh, okay, so you stayed with her to fix it?”  He did not expect her gentle reply, “No, Daddy, I stayed with her to help her cry.”

As strange as it may sound, it is our weeping together that brings about our healing as grieving individuals and friends.  The tear ducts that God has graciously given us are not just to cleanse our eyes of dust and dirt, but also to release and cleanse our souls of grief and pain.

Weeping together reminds us that we are vulnerable human beings and not self-sufficient; dependent upon and needing one another.  Weeping together reminds us that we are spiritual beings, feeling the tug in heart and soul to turn to God and cry out for help and hope.

Weeping together cleanses our spiritual eyes to see God as our compassionate Father and friend.  Most importantly, weeping together is a powerful unifying force that turns our usual selfishness into unselfish caring and generosity.

We often don’t do this very well, because our full schedules keep us so busy and disconnected from another’s pain.  But God is always giving us opportunities to hear someone’s cry, to feel someone’s pain, and to be God’s compassionate presence in the midst of their hurt.

I hope that all of us will nurture within ourselves a Spirit-led flexibility that allows us to step away from our busyness and sit with those who need a friend to “help them cry.” 

In his book, Out of Solitude, Henri Nouwen says, “When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand.”

Perhaps the most important thing we can do in life is to “weep with those who weep.”

“Healing Rays of Righteousness” – March 27, 2019