Grief and the Believer

Somadina’s father died on a Tuesday evening in a hospital in Yaba, a little after seven. Somadina was holding his hand. The doctor came, checked, and quietly drew the curtain. Within an hour the phone calls had begun.

By the next morning he was no longer simply a son who had lost his father. He was the first son, and the first son has duties. His uncles arrived from the east. There were meetings about the date of the burial, the mortuary, the village, the canopies, the cow, the caterers, the brochure, the aso-ebi, the band and the levy each branch of the family would contribute. Somadina is an accountant, and before long he had a spreadsheet with forty-three lines on it.

At the hospital, one of his uncles had put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Be strong. Men do not cry. You are now the head of this family.” At church that Sunday, several people told him, warmly and sincerely, “Do not cry, brother. Daddy is with the Lord. We should rejoice.” So he did not cry. There was too much to do anyway.

His father lay in the mortuary for eleven weeks while the arrangements were made. Then came the long road home to Anambra, the wake, the service, the burial in the family compound, the reception that fed half the village. Somadina was everywhere, greeting dignitaries, settling disputes, paying the band. People said it was a befitting burial. He was proud of that, and he had honoured his father well.

Three weeks after he returned to Lagos, he was sitting in his car outside a supermarket when his phone lit up with a reminder he had forgotten to delete: Call Daddy. Sunday. He sat there for a long time. And finally, alone in a car park in Lekki, he wept as he had not wept since he was a boy.

Grief had waited for him. It usually does.

What loss does to an ordinary day

Grief changes the whole shape of life. A death removes a person from every ordinary place they used to occupy: the chair at the table, the voice on the phone, the name in your contacts, the one you would call with good news. For months afterwards, ordinary moments become ambushes. You buy two of something out of habit. You hear a song. You see someone in the market who walks the way your mother walked.

Loss also changes the way you pray. Many bereaved believers discover that the words they used to pray easily no longer come. Praise feels hollow. Petition feels pointless, because the thing you most wanted has already been refused. Some find that they cannot pray at all for a while, and they are frightened by that. Others find that their prayers have become raw and angry in a way that would embarrass them in a church meeting.

If that is where you are, I want you to know that none of this means your faith has failed. It means you have loved someone, and they are gone. The Bible does not ask you to hide that. It shows you a Saviour who stood at a grave and wept, and a Father who keeps company with the broken-hearted. “The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart” (Psalm 34:18).

Four days in Bethany

John 11 tells us about a family Jesus loved. Martha, Mary and their brother Lazarus lived in Bethany, a village about two miles from Jerusalem. Jesus had stayed in their home. He knew their kitchen and their table. When Lazarus fell ill, the sisters sent Him a simple message: “Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick” (John 11:3).

Jesus did not come immediately. By the time He arrived, Lazarus “had lain in the grave four days already” (John 11:17). Many Jews from Jerusalem had come to comfort the sisters, as was the custom. Mourning in that culture was communal and loud and lasted for days. The house was full of people.

Then Martha, as soon as she heard that Jesus was coming, went and met him: but Mary sat still in the house. Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this? She saith unto him, Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world.

Martha goes out to meet Jesus on the road. Her first words carry both faith and pain: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” She is telling Him, without rudeness, the truth about how it feels. You could have prevented this. You did not come.

Punchline

Then, in the same breath, she adds, “But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee.” Grief and faith sit side by side in her. She does not choose between them.

Jesus responds to Martha with teaching, because Martha is asking with her mind. “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” This is one of the greatest statements in all of Scripture. Jesus does not simply say that there will be a resurrection one day. He says that He is the resurrection. Life over death is found in a Person, and He is standing in front of her on a dusty road outside a grieving village.

Martha’s confession is magnificent: “Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God.” But notice that her confession does not stop her grief. She still goes back to the house. Her brother is still in the tomb. Right doctrine does not mean the pain has gone away.

Then Mary comes, and the scene changes completely.

Jesus wept

Then when Mary was come where Jesus was, and saw him, she fell down at his feet, saying unto him, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, And said, Where have ye laid him? They said unto him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how he loved him!

Mary says exactly the same words her sister said: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died.” But she says them on the ground, at His feet, weeping. And this time Jesus does not teach. He does not repeat the great statement about the resurrection. He responds to Mary’s tears with His own.

Look at the words John uses. “He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled.” The word translated groaned is a strong one. Elsewhere it is used of a deep, almost angry stirring, the snort of a horse or a stern rebuke. Many interpreters understand it to mean that Jesus was indignant as well as sad, deeply moved with something like anger at death itself, at the ruin it brings into the lives of people He loves. Troubled means stirred up, agitated, shaken. The Son of God was shaken by this grave.

Then come the two shortest words in the English Bible. “Jesus wept.” John uses a different verb for Jesus’ weeping from the one he uses for Mary and the mourners. Theirs was the loud wailing of a funeral. His was quieter, the word for shedding tears. But they were real tears, running down a human face, at the grave of a friend.

What makes this so remarkable is that Jesus knew what He was about to do. Within minutes He would call Lazarus out of the tomb. He had already told His disciples that this sickness was “for the glory of God” (John 11:4). If anyone had a reason to skip the tears and go straight to the victory, it was Jesus. And He wept anyway.

That tells us something precious. Tears at a graveside are not a lack of faith in the resurrection. The One who is the resurrection cried. Grief is what love feels like when someone is lost, and Jesus loved Lazarus. The mourners saw it plainly: “Behold how he loved him!”

So when someone tells you, “Do not cry, he is with the Lord,” you may answer gently that Jesus cried, and He was the Lord. Hope and tears are not enemies. At the tomb of Lazarus, they stood together in one Man.

It also tells us that God is not indifferent to death. Death was never part of the good creation as God made it. Paul calls it “the last enemy that shall be destroyed” (1 Corinthians 15:26). When Jesus groaned at the tomb, He was looking at an enemy He had come to defeat. Your sorrow at the death of someone you love is a small echo of His own response to death.

Notice too that Jesus met the two sisters differently. To Martha, who came asking with her mind, He gave truth. To Mary, who came falling at His feet, He gave His presence and His tears. Both were real comfort. Grief does not look the same in every person, and Jesus did not require Martha to grieve like Mary or Mary to grieve like Martha. In a family where someone has died, one person may want to talk, another may want silence, one may cry openly and another may throw themselves into work, as Somadina did. None of these is the right way. Jesus meets each one where they are.

Nugget

Jesus wept at the grave of a man He was about to raise. Your tears are not a failure of faith. They are love grieving in the presence of the One who weeps with you.

How long, O LORD

Psalm 13 is only six verses long, but it carries the weight of a long season of sorrow. It begins with a question repeated four times: “How long wilt thou forget me, O LORD? for ever? how long wilt thou hide thy face from me? How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow in my heart daily?” (Psalm 13:1-2).

Sorrow in my heart daily. That is what grief often feels like. It does not come once and leave. It comes back every morning. The psalmist feels forgotten. He feels that God’s face is hidden. And he says so, directly, to God.

Then he asks for help: “Consider and hear me, O LORD my God: lighten mine eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death” (Psalm 13:3). Grief can make the eyes heavy and the whole world dim. He asks God to bring light back into them.

And then, without any explanation of what changed, the psalm turns: “But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in thy salvation. I will sing unto the LORD, because he hath dealt bountifully with me” (Psalm 13:5-6).

We need to read this carefully. The psalm does not say that the sorrow has disappeared. It says that the psalmist has trusted, and that his heart shall rejoice. The joy is partly a present decision and partly a future expectation. Many grieving believers find themselves living in the middle of this psalm for a long time, saying how long and I have trusted in the same prayer, sometimes on the same day.

That is allowed. Psalm 13 is in the Bible to give you words for exactly that place. You do not need to jump from verse 1 to verse 6 in a single week. The psalm does not give a timetable, and neither should we. Some people feel the first lifting of grief within months. For others it takes years. The death of a child, a spouse, a parent who was your closest friend, may leave a mark you carry for the rest of your life. A lasting ache is a sign of how much the person mattered, and no proof that God has failed to comfort you.

Sorrow that is not without hope

Paul wrote to the young church in Thessalonica, where some believers had died and others were troubled about what had become of them:

But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.

Read the first verse slowly, because it is often misquoted. Paul does not say, “Do not sorrow.” He says, “that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.” He assumes that believers will sorrow. What he wants is for their sorrow to be a different kind of sorrow, a grief that has hope inside it.

Notice the language Paul uses for the believers who have died. He calls them “them which are asleep” and “them also which sleep in Jesus.” Sleep is something you wake up from. Paul admits the reality of death and speaks of it in the light of the resurrection. Those who have died in Christ are not lost. They are with Him, and they will come with Him.

“For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” The ground of Christian hope is the death and resurrection of Jesus, something far firmer than our feelings or a vague belief that everything will be fine. Because He rose, those who belong to Him will rise.

This hope does not cancel grief. It accompanies it. A Christian at a graveside may weep as hard as anyone else. But underneath the weeping there is a floor that does not give way. The separation is real, and it hurts terribly. It is also temporary.

There is a caution here too. Not every death leaves us with the same certainty. Sometimes the person who died gave no clear indication of faith in Christ, and the bereaved believer is left with fear as well as sorrow. We should be honest and gentle here. We are not the final judges of any human heart, and we do not know what passed between a dying person and God in their last days. We can entrust them to the Judge of all the earth, who will do right (Genesis 18:25), and we can bring our sorrow and our questions honestly to Him.

Weep with them that weep

Paul gave the church a simple instruction: “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:15). Notice what it does not say. It does not say, “Explain to them that weep.” It does not say, “Correct them that weep,” or “Hurry them that weep.” It says weep with them.

Job’s friends are usually remembered for their foolish speeches. But their first response was wise. When they saw Job, “they sat down with him upon the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake a word unto him: for they saw that his grief was very great” (Job 2:13). Their silence was the best thing they did. Their trouble began when they started talking.

Many of us feel that we must say something when we visit the bereaved. So we reach for phrases. God knows best. He is in a better place. At least he did not suffer long. God needed him more. You must be strong for the children. Some of these contain truth. But in the first days of grief, most of them land like stones. The grieving person does not need an explanation. They need company.

What helps? Sitting with them. Bringing food so they do not have to cook. Helping with the endless practical arrangements. Handling the visitors so the family can rest. Saying the dead person’s name and telling a story about them. Praying briefly and simply. And above all, coming back.

That last point matters more than almost anything else. In Nigerian life, the first days after a death are often crowded with visitors. The house fills, condolence registers are signed, and people come from far and near. Then the burial happens, the canopies come down, everyone goes home, and the bereaved are suddenly alone with the silence. That is often when grief truly begins, as it did for Somadina in the supermarket car park. Unhurried care means being there in the third month and the sixth month and on the first anniversary, when everyone else has moved on.

Paul describes how God’s comfort travels:

Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.

God is “the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort.” He comforts us “in all our tribulation.” And part of His purpose is that we may become comforters ourselves, “by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God.” People who have grieved and been comforted often become the best comforters, because they know what helps and what does not.

Scripture also gives special attention to those whom a death leaves most vulnerable. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27). A widow, or a child who has lost a parent, may face financial hardship, pressure from relatives and the loss of a home, as well as sorrow. The church should be there with practical help as well as prayers.

Funerals, family and pressure

Nigerian funerals carry deep meaning. Across our many peoples, the burial of a parent or elder is an act of honour, a public declaration that this life mattered. Families come together. Communities share the cost and the work. There is food, music, testimony and remembrance. The Bible itself records great mourning. When Jacob died, Joseph and his household travelled to Canaan and “mourned with a great and very sore lamentation: and he made a mourning for his father seven days” (Genesis 50:10). When Stephen was martyred, “devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him” (Acts 8:2). Honouring the dead and mourning them publicly is right, and there is nothing unspiritual about it.

But we should also be honest about the pressures that can surround a death. Expectations of a “befitting burial” can push families into serious debt, and children may spend years repaying loans taken to fund a single weekend. Long delays while the body waits in the mortuary can hold the family’s grief in suspension for months. Disputes over property and inheritance can break out before the burial has even taken place. And in some places, widows are still subjected to practices that humiliate or harm them, or are driven from their homes by relatives. Many communities and churches have rightly turned away from these practices. No widow should ever be made to endure them in the name of custom or tradition, and believers should stand with her and help her find protection where it is needed.

Christians are free to honour their dead fully and lovingly without being bound by pressure that God does not require. A modest burial is not a dishonour. Love is not measured by the number of canopies. If you are the first son or the eldest daughter, carrying expectations that feel crushing, you may speak honestly with your family, take wise counsel, and refuse debt that will burden your own children. And you may give yourself permission to grieve as well as to organise. Somadina told me later that he wished someone had told him at the hospital that the head of a family is allowed to cry. Jesus was the head of a much larger family, and He wept.

Help for the long road, and the day of no more tears

Grief usually softens over time, though it rarely disappears completely. But sometimes it becomes something heavier. If, many months after a loss, you find that you cannot function at work or at home, that you cannot sleep or eat, that you feel numb all the time, or that you have begun to think life is not worth living, please seek help. Speak to your pastor and to a doctor. Many hospitals, and some churches, now offer bereavement counselling or grief support groups, where you can sit with others who understand. A trained counsellor can help you carry what feels unbearable. If you are ever thinking of ending your life, please tell someone you trust today and seek urgent medical help. God’s comfort often reaches us through people He has equipped to give it.

And hold on to where the story is going. John, who stood near the tomb of Lazarus and saw Jesus weep, was later given a vision of the end:

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.” God Himself will wipe them away, the way a mother wipes the face of a crying child. Every tear shed at every graveside will be personally attended to by God. “There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

Isaiah saw the same day centuries earlier: “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces” (Isaiah 25:8). Death will be swallowed up.

Punchline

Until that day, we weep. But we weep as people who know that the One who wept at Lazarus’s tomb also called Lazarus out of it. He has the last word over every grave.

A few days after that afternoon in the car park, there was a knock on Somadina’s door. It was Mama Ajoke, a widow from his church who had buried her husband twenty years earlier. She had noticed that he had stopped coming to the midweek service. She was carrying a flask of pepper soup and a small bag of oranges.

She did not preach. She sat in his parlour, served the soup and asked him to tell her about his father. He told her about the morning walks, the terrible jokes, the way his father prayed for each of his children by name every night. At some point he began to cry again, and apologised. Mama Ajoke shook her head. “Cry, my son,” she said. “Jesus cried. I cried for my husband for two years. God did not mind.”

She came back the following month, and the month after that. On the first anniversary of his father’s death, she sent a text message at seven in the morning: Thinking of you and your daddy today. He is with the Lord, and the Lord is with you. Somadina has since joined a bereavement support group that meets at a hospital near his office. He still reaches for his phone some Sundays. It still hurts.

But he has learned what Martha and Mary learned at Bethany. The Lord who is the resurrection and the life also stands at the graveside and weeps. You do not need to choose between your hope and your tears. Bring both to Him. He will carry them, and one day He will wipe the last of them away.

For reflection, practice and prayer

Teaching Companion

For Reflection

• Have you been told, directly or indirectly, that a believer should not cry at a loss? How does John 11:35 speak to that?
• Jesus responded differently to Martha and to Mary. How do you tend to grieve, and how have you seen others in your family grieve differently?
• Psalm 13 moves from “how long” to “I have trusted.” Where are you in that psalm today? Can you pray it honestly?
• What is the difference between sorrowing as those who have no hope and sorrowing as those who do?
• Who do you know who has been bereaved in the past year? What would unhurried care look like for them in the coming weeks?

This Week

If you are grieving, read Psalm 13 aloud each morning this week and pray it in your own words, telling God honestly how long the days feel. Then write down one memory of the person you have lost and thank God for them by name. If you are not grieving now, think of someone who lost a loved one in the past year, especially someone whose burial is now long past. Visit them, call them, or take them a meal this week. Say the name of the person they lost, ask them to tell you a story, and resist the urge to explain anything.

A Prayer

Lord Jesus, You stood at the grave of Your friend and wept. Thank You that You do not ask me to pretend that I am not hurting. I bring You my sorrow, the empty chair, the silent phone and the questions I cannot answer. How long will this ache last? I do not know. But I have trusted in Your mercy, and I ask You to lighten my eyes. You are the resurrection and the life. Help me to grieve with hope, to receive the comfort You send through Your people, and to become a comforter for others. Keep the one I have lost in Your care, and hold me until the day You wipe away every tear. Amen.

Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.

Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.