Weep with those who weep

Weep with those who weep.

That’s not a suggestion; it’s a calling.

God never handed out a stopwatch for sorrow. He never gave us a chart with neat little boxes for “moving on.” And if He hasn’t, then why do we?

Grief has no deadline. It lingers. It reshapes. It weaves itself into the fabric of who we are. And the holiest thing we can do is not to rush it, not to fix it, but to enter it with someone—awkward, trembling, unsure, but present.

Let’s agree together to risk the awkwardness. To stop backing away from another’s pain. To lean in instead. To sit in the silence of brokenness without needing to fill it with answers. Because here’s the truth: we don’t have to know the pain to walk beside it. We don’t have to carry the same scars to bear one another’s burdens.

It was never our job to fix what only God can heal. Our calling is simpler, harder, holier: to love in the valley. To hold space in the wilderness. To show up when it hurts.

Statistics say that 57% of Americans are grieving someone close in the last three years. But numbers can’t capture the weight of it. Behind that percentage is a widow sleeping on one side of the bed, a mother weeping in the dark, a friend clutching the phone they’ll never hear ring again, a heart that buried not just a child but a dream.

Every other face you pass in the grocery store, at the gas station, in the church pew, is carrying the ache of a goodbye. Every other voice is echoing with unanswered prayers and empty chairs. Every other soul is navigating a loss that has carved deep into their story.

So what if we lived like that mattered?

What if we looked at strangers and remembered—half of them are grieving?

What if we slowed down enough to see the invisible weight pressing on their shoulders?

What if, instead of demanding resilience, we offered refuge?

Because the Church is not called to be a place of quick fixes and easy clichés. We are called to be a sanctuary for the broken, a refuge for the weary, a fellowship of tears.

Grief is not weakness.

Silence is not failure.

Awkwardness is not the enemy.

The enemy is distance. The enemy is isolation. The enemy is pretending.

So let’s be brave enough to sit in the ashes together. To love without fixing. To lean in, not away. And to believe that even in the valley of shadows, God Himself bends low—collecting every tear, redeeming every loss, and writing resurrection into every grave.