I received a comment on my blog post and album about my brother Jonathan who died on August 5, 1992 and whose death I remembered.  A student of mine commented that until he read that blog, he could not understand why our pastor, my Dad, always says that he doesn’t feel like celebrating his birthday.

And I suppose that other people who read that blog and saw the album of Jonathan on Facebook also wondered if I were not getting unhinged because it has been twenty years and I still speak of the grief I have over his death. They probably saw the blog and the album and hit “like” to show that they are in polite solidarity with me, but they turned away because it is too much to bear on a Sunday morning.

What is wrong with grief? What is wrong with the expression of grief?

I do not apologize for my grief.  Grief is a normal emotional reaction to loss. When you lose a job (as many Americans experienced with the economic downturn the past few years), the laid-off workers went through a period of grief and mourning. When a house gets burned down or when floods destroy all that we’ve worked so hard for, we grieve. On the other hand, when a person who experienced a loss of a loved one fails to grieve, that person short-circuits his emotional health.  Failure to grieve means emotional numbness and emotional paralysis is a sure sign of psychological ill-health.

Grief is a normal human reaction. When Cory Aquino died, we all grieved.  When Dolphy died, we all grieved.  Grief is one thing common to all humans. Only humans who build loving relationships with other humans experience grief at the loss of that relationship. You are not human if you do not experience grief: you are like Mr. Spock or Data: you’re either a Vulcan or an android, but you are definitely not human.

Jesus Christ experienced grief.  Yes, read it in John 11:35: Jesus wept.  He was at the tomb of one of his best friends, Lazarus.  He was away from Bethany when Lazarus died.  Lazarus’s sisters sent him word to come and see Lazarus, perhaps to heal him, as Lazarus lay dying.  Jesus did not come immediately.  When he arrived, he saw grief in Mary and Martha.  When he went to the tomb, Jesus groaned in his spirit and he wept.

Even the Creator of the universe, when his friend died(and he had very few friends during his earthly ministry) He grieved.  The Son of God, God the Son, the Word who was made flesh, experienced grief. Jesus felt deeply about things.  The physical suffering of the people he met everyday moved him emotionally.  The hunger of the people moved him. He stood at the top of the Mount of Olives grieving for the hard-heartedness of Jerusalem.  In Gethsemane, Jesus wept for himself because his pure soul will have to take on all the sin of the whole world. Jesus wept because Jesus was in the flesh.

Solomon, the wisest and riches man who had ever lived said that there is a time to weep and a time to laugh.  The human experience is not complete without grief. People think (and they are mistaken in this thought) that happiness is the absence of grief.  It is not.  I posit that only those who have experienced grief can ever truly know deep and lasting happiness.

This is because humans learn better when concepts are presented as a dichotomy; when things are perceived in contrast.  We can never tell black unless it is next to white.  We can never know clarity unless we were first confused.  We can never appreciate quiet until we get irritated by the noise. You can never feel rested if you were never tired in the first place. In the same vein, you can never know how it is to be happy unless you experience grief.

David, the mighty warrior-king, the psalmist-poet, knew grief. He grieved for his own sin when he committed adultery with Bathsheba.  He grieved for his own fall from grace when he put to death a man who was faithful to him, Urriah, the husband of Bathsheba.  Most of all, when his son from Bathsheba died, he grieved.  He mourned.  He fasted and put ash on his head.  He shaved off his beard and he cried in his grief. His was a private and a very public grief.

I will not apologize for my grief even if it is a twenty-year old grief.  I imagine I will grieve for my brother all the days of my life every time I remember him.  I grieve for him in direct proportion to my deep love for him. I grieve every time I look back and calculate how old he would be today.  I called my father this morning wondering how they were in this rain and he said to me, “If Jonathan were alive today, I’d imagine he would be reviewing for the Bar exams right now.” I felt a stab in my chest.  Jonathan would have been 26 years old and he wanted to be a lawyer just like my Dad.  Had he been alive he would have been reviewing for the Bar Exams. My dad would have another lawyer for a son. He grieves just like me.

Unlike me, however, he hides his grief.  He said to me that on Sunday, at the birthday bash at church, he refused to mention Jonathan’s name. He said he had no heart to mention his name because everyone was so happy.  He didn’t dare make everyone uncomfortable and unhappy by voicing his grief. Unlike him, I do not apologize for my grief. To grieve makes others around you uncomfortable, but it is not sin.  To grieve is not to sin.

Apostle Paul grieved over his utter inability to get over his sinful self:  he called himself a wretched man.  And grief shows my wretchedness before God.  Grief shows that I am unable to control life and unable to stop death.  My grief is Exhibit “A” of my sinful state, it shows the power of sin over my existence and the dominion of sin in this world.  When Adam and Eve sinned, the punishment was certain death.  When I grieve, I acknowledge that I am condemned to die as all men are condemned to die.

What is sin is to be overcome with grief.  What is sin is to be overwhelmed with grief and to wallow in it as though grief is all that there is in this life. This is a lie from the father of lies.  Apostle Paul voiced the best attitude over grief:  I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.  If in God’s divine plan, you must go through the valley of the shadow of death and know fear and grief, then be content in that state.  God’s grace is ever present for you even in the valley.  To cry out wanting escape instead of crying out for grace and learning while in the valley is to shun a very important learning experience.

Apostle Paul also said: none of these things move me.  If your grief moves you away from God, then it is sin.  But if your grief brings you to the foot of the cross; if it brings you to the throne of grace; if your grief causes you to turn to the God of all comfort and find in him your all in all; if it makes you wait on the Lord to renew your emotional strength, then your grief is not sin.  Your grief is a blessing.

Apostle Paul also exhorted us: set your affections on things above, not on things on this earth.  If your grief makes you look beyond this life and helps you see with clarity the hope of eternal life beyond your miserable physical existence, then your grief is a gift of insight from God.

Apostle Paul also told us that the goal of the Christian life is that we may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering.  Take note that the triumph of the Resurrection is predicated upon the humiliation of Golgotha and the grief of the tomb.  We can never experience the resurrection unless we die. And with death grief is not far behind.

The gospel of Jesus Christ includes the death, the burial and the resurrection.  If you do not believe that Jesus Christ died for your sin, that he was buried because he died and that he was risen from the dead after he died, you cannot be saved. To experience grief over death is to fellowship, to take part of the sufferings of Christ.  But grief does not stand alone.  With grief comes the promise of resurrection. As surely as Jesus Christ died on the cross, he surely rose from the dead. I will not apologize for my grief because my grief leads me to expect the resurrection from the dead.

What did Apostle Paul say?  Nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Neither death nor life, nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth nor any  other creature can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

A friend of mine, reacting perhaps to the blog posts, commented that “challenges are part of the excitement of living.”  He said that without them ” life would be boring and meaningless.”  I thought about that.  I think he compared my grief to a challenge. Which is why he said that challenges are part of life.  I do not wholly agree.  I cannot totally agree. Grief and loss are not challenges, they are a given.  In a mathematical problem, a given is something certain, something one cannot argue with or deny.  Death, grief and loss are a given.  The challenge is not in finding ways to evade the grief or to get through it as quickly as we can and move on.  The challenge lies in how I will allow grief to transform me.

Will my grief strengthen my resolve to shower the people I love with love while they are still with me?  Will my grief show me that I do not control my life so I entrust my life and the life of those I love to the hands of Almighty God?  Will my grief allow me to depend on His grace to sustain me because I cannot transform my grief?  Will my grief lead me to absolute surrender to God?  If in my grief, I learn these things then the grief is a joy.  “In joyful grief, I lift my praise…..”

I WILL NOT APOLOGIZE FOR MY GRIEF.  I DO NOT APOLOGIZE FOR MY GRIEF. I thank my God for my grief.  With this grief, I can give the highest praise worthy of the Highest. Thank you, Lord for this grief.  I cannot praise and thank you enough without this grief.  I cannot know you by faith without this grief…. thank you, Lord.