When suffering has done it’s work, grief remains.

When we start out in faith our suffering is highly educative. We ask questions like why did God allow this to happen to me? Why doesn’t God do something about this? We learn many things about God and the world – that God loves the world, but it is broken. God hates evil but allows it to remain. You learn many things about yourself, like it is hard to control my desire to react to my circumstances, it is hard to avoid sinning when pummelled to the ground. I want to lash out at others or myself by self-destructive behaviour. I want to give up, but know I can’t. When these lessons are learnt, what remains? When you know you can’t give up, just because it is hard. When you know others have brought this upon you and it is not your place to retaliate. When you know that self abuse will achieve nothing. When you know you have nowhere to hide from it’s pain.

I’ll tell you: grief remains.

Fearless, pure knowledge of the brokenness and evil in the world.

This works for suffering caused by others. You can have insight into the mind of Christ, how, exactly how, with what intellectual thinking he can turn to his crucifiers and pray for their forgiveness. He sees evil for what it was, and lowers his towering figure, bends down to eyeball it and speaks directly to it, eye to eye. “Forgive them, they don’t understand what they are doing.” Did these people cause him pain? Yes, they were his torturers, and his murderers. But the pain they inflicted did not cause Christ to give up, lash out, retreat…. He simply continued to do what he always did: he showed grace. When suffering has done it’s work on you, I venture that you may eventually know how to do the same.

This works for suffering caused by happenstance. When, by no fault of anyone, evil is unleashed upon hapless victims. You can have insight into the mind of Christ, looking upon the tomb of his friend, his dead friend, and weeping. No one to blame. Just the pure, infinite grief of a broken, fallen world. Weeping for its brokenness. Unadulterated, undistracted emotional pain. Grief remains.

But I tell you grief remains for a little while. For even the Messiah’s grief is replaced by joy.

Christ, after suffering and dying, rises.

Lazarus, after suffering and dying, rises.

This world, after all its suffering and death, will be restored.