A Savior Who Knows What It Is to Weep
Body
“He told Martha, ‘Your brother will rise again’ (11:23) but He did not say to Martha, ‘Don’t grieve.’ He is the Resurrection and the Life, but He weeps with Martha and Mary over their loss.” - Colin Smith
As iron sharpens iron,
one person sharpens another. (Proverbs 27:17)
“He told Martha, ‘Your brother will rise again’ (11:23) but He did not say to Martha, ‘Don’t grieve.’ He is the Resurrection and the Life, but He weeps with Martha and Mary over their loss.” - Colin Smith
“With church funerals and burials no longer the norm, pastors hope to restore occasions to gather and remember.” - C.Today
When we think of the story of Jesus’s birth in the little town of Bethlehem, we envision a beautiful and peaceful scene with shepherds and wise men gathered around a manger, worshipping the young Christ. But that’s not the whole picture! Matthew reminds us that the birth of Christ was not only associated with happiness and hope but also with feelings of profound sorrow and deep despair.
“The day we received the report was one of the hardest we’ve had since he died. Yet there was also some comfort in it. It was comforting in the sense that he did nothing wrong and we did nothing wrong. It was comforting in the sense that the people who tried to save him did all they could… And it was comforting in the sense that it was so clearly an act of providence in which the Lord just took him.
“How can we avoid the pitfall of being one of these well-meaning, but miserable comforters?” - TGC
“In recent months I have often mentioned the growing importance of poetry in my life. As we come to Good Friday and Easter, I have been enjoying some of the devotional poetry of days gone by, and was especially struck by Hannah Flagg Gould’s “To the Mourner.’” - Challies
“The birth of my Savior has everything to do with the death of my son, for it is only because of Christ’s birth that I can have hope in Nick’s death. Because Jesus lived and lives, I can have confidence that Nick lives and will live. Christmas does not take away all my pain, but it does give me hope…” - Challies
“If Nick’s death was not a lapse in God’s sovereignty, it was also not a lapse in his goodness. If there was no moment in which God stopped being sovereign there is no moment in which he stopped being good—good toward us, good toward Nick, good according to his perfect wisdom. God can’t not be good.” - Challies
Reposted from The Cripplegate.
Depression and discouragement are not respecters of the holidays. For many reasons, the normal sorrow of life can reach a highpoint this time of year for some.
A while ago I went to visit a man whose wife had died. It was a cold winter day in Maine as I drove up to the ancient farmhouse overlooking a frozen lake in a largely unknown small town in rural Maine. For anyone reading this who is not from Maine, let me tell you that he fit the quintessential image of a Mainer. He sported a thick white beard and his skin was leathered and toughened by the harsh Maine winters and years of working outside.
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