What does the Bible say about overcoming grief?

Nor is it otherwise with us now. Have our hearts been broken and bereaved by the stern, rude hand of death? Has his cold breath chilled our affections? What is the remedy? Resurrection. Yes; resurrection, that great restorer, not merely of "tired" but of ruined nature, fills up all blanks — repairs all breaches — remedies all ills. If the conscience be affected by a sense of sin, resurrection sets it at rest, by the assurance that the Surety's work has been fully accepted. If the heart be bowed down with sorrow, and torn by the ravages of death, resurrection heals, soothes and binds it up, by securing the restoration and reunion of all who have gone before; it tells us to "sorrow not 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" (1 Thess. 4:13-14). It is commonly thought that time fills up all the blanks which death has made in the affections; but the spiritual mind could never regard time, with its sorrowful vicissitudes, as a substitute for resurrection and its immortal joys. The poor worldling may, perhaps, find, in passing circumstances, something to fill up the void which death makes, but not so the Christian; to him, resurrection is the grand object: to that he looks as the only instrumentality by which all his losses can be retrieved, and all his evils remedied.

But however sure and certain that the separation is only for "a little while," and that good is the will of the Lord, the poor human heart is bowed down beneath the weight of a sorrow that has cast its dark shade over everything around, and deepens by the tender recollections of a thousand associations day by day. It is not unbelief, it is not murmuring, it is the agony of a bereaved affection. Oh, mysterious agony! Thy voice is groans and sighs; thy repast is tears, yet we would not be withdrawn from thee, we love to feed upon thee, we love to dwell with thee alone. It changes everything here below, but more to some than to others. The paths of the wilderness may be dark and lonely, the poor body may be feeble, the spirit may be crushed, the heart may lie bleeding, the shadows of death may so thicken around us in the valley, that we are unable to proceed, and can only say, "Father, take my hand, and through the gloom lead safely home thy child."

Time alone restores. After a while the sorrow sleeps, but never dies; or it may ebb like the tide, but flows again as deep as ever. Communion with the Lord is the only healing balm for the wounded spirit, and communion with His word the true means for recovering power for service * And nothing will so naturally and sweetly take a sorrowing heart off itself as being interested in the salvation of others for the Lord's glory.

You will admit that it must be blessed for the Lord to have His redeemed people at home, and that it must be blessed for them to be there with Him, for as in the new earth there will be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying nor any more pain, and all tears will be wiped from all eyes, so must it be now in the presence of the Lord. You have no doubt as to all this, but what of yourself? You have sorrow and tears enough, you have been left lonely and desolate; and what a desolator death is! You hear the words of your friends, and they are sympathetic words, and are spoken for your consolation, but how cold the warmest of them seem to be. You feel that they do not understand what this means to you. There is a certain comfort in their words but they do not go far enough. There is a depth within you that they cannot reach, and your sorrow lies in that unreachable depth; there is a secret chamber within your heart that the most intimate of your friends cannot enter, and it is in that very chamber that this sorrow of yours has taken up its abode. Can there be any blessedness for you? Yes, for the Lord Himself has said, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted." And He will make good His own word, even to you. Your sorrow has made more room for Him in your life than ever there has been before; it has made you feel your need of Him as you never felt it before. He has never been far away from you. He is at your side now. He is waiting for you to admit Him into that secret chamber where your grief holds its sway. He would enter there that He might fill it with His own peace, the peace of His presence. He is the great Comforter, and He is this because He fully understands. Nobody else does. Your heart knows its own bitterness, and there are times when your best friends seem complete strangers to you, so little do they understand you and enter into your feelings, but it is not so with Him. He knows you through and through, He understands, and because He understands and knows all you are passing through, He can sympathize.

Think of broken-hearted Mary. She brought her sorrow to the feet of the Lord as He waited for her outside the town of Bethany. "If Thou hadst been here," she cried, "my brother had not died." Then she looked up into His face through her tears, and lo, JESUS WEPT. Was not she at that moment most blessedly comforted? She had known that He loved her before, but she had never known that He loved her like that. His tears were more eloquent than words, and she found that His sympathy was greater than her sorrow. He did not speak to her, but He kept close by her side, and you may be sure that it was true of her, then and there, "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted."

And why has that incident been given to us in the Gospel that unfolds for us the glory of the Son of God? For your sake. What He was for Mary, He is for you. You may realize that He who is the mighty God feels for you, that He enters into your grief, that He knows the aching in your stricken heart, and the silence in your bereaved home, and not only the silence of it but the shadow that has crept into every room of it, and that knowing all He desires to fill up your heart with His own comfort. He will not remove the sorrow as He did in Mary's case, but He will give you something greater than it — His own friendship and sympathy. He offers you the full knowledge of a love that death itself cannot spoil — His own love. He can make that love so real to you that you will discover that you can do without everybody and everything but Himself. Yes, neither father, mother, sister, brother, friend, husband, wife, houses, lands, are indispensable to us, they have their place in our natural lives, and their place is a God-given blessed place while it lasts, but He is our life and will be our life for ever; He is our joy unspeakable and full of glory: Without them we may live, but without Him we cannot.

We may feel how dependent we have been on a human presence and an earthly voice — but God, even our God, shall bless us and give us to feel that the "everlasting arms" are around us, and that "in His presence there is fulness of joy." Waves of sorrow and a sense of loss may beat upon our hearts in almost overwhelming power, but He still treads the waters of affliction, and beneath His feet the storm is stayed, and furious winds of trouble and raging waves of fear all sink to rest when He says "Peace, be still." He comes in the watches of the night, and we hear Him say "It is I, be not afraid." We sorrow, but "not as others that have no hope," for the foundation of our hope is in Him Who has said, "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid." The future we can and must leave with Him.

If bereaved of those we love in Christ there is the sorrow as having lost their affections and companionship, but “we sorrow not as others which have no hope.” The death of Christ has made all the difference to our sorrow, for we know the loved one is with Christ, which is far better, and His death has given us the hope of soon seeing our loved ones in Christ again, at His coming. Besides, we have the knowledge of Christ’s love in our sorrow, and the sympathy of Him who wept with Mary and Martha; and His companionship in the trial brings its own sweetness and gain.

I do earnestly pray that this sorrow may be blessed to you and to all your dear children, that they may see how near death is, but the Lord still nearer. Assure dear M. how truly I sympathise with him. A father's sorrow, though of another character, is not less deep than a mother's. You must expect that, as time passes on, the present feeling of loss will diminish, and in a certain sense pass away too. Not that the affectionate remembrance of your poor little babe will be at all gone; but its character will be changed, and your living children and daily occupations will make it less absorbing. This is natural, and in one sense right. Living duties have their place, which cannot be rightly yielded to absorbing affections. What I would earnestly recommend to you is, to profit of the moments when the impression and present effect of it is strong; to place yourself before God, and reap all the fruit of His dispensations and tender grace. It is a time when He searches and manifests His love to the heart at the same time. May you grow much by this - surely to a mother's heart - painful occurrence.

403 I do earnestly pray that this sorrow may be blessed to you and to all your dear children, that they may see how near death is, but the Lord still nearer. Assure dear M - how truly I sympathise with him. A father's sorrow, though of another character, is not less deep than a mother's. You must expect that, as time passes on, the present feeling of loss will diminish, and, in a certain sense, pass away too. Not that the affectionate remembrance of your poor little babe will be at all gone; but its character will be changed, and your living children and daily occupation will make it less absorbing. This is natural, and, in one sense, right. Living duties have their place, which cannot be rightly yielded to absorbing affections. What I would earnestly recommend to you is to profit by the moments when the impression and present effect of it is strong; to place yourself before God, and reap all the fruit of His dispensations and tender grace. It is a time when He searches and manifests His love to the heart at the same time. May you grow much by this - surely to a mother's heart - painful occurrence.

Together with this it must be remembered that, if He is "the God of all comfort," there is no comfort outside of Himself. It is one of the sorrowful failings of His people that they do so often turn to other sources for relief and alleviation in seasons of grief; and thereby they miss the blessed lessons which He would teach them through their exercises under His chastenings. Like Israel of old, instead of turning at once, when under pressure, to Himself, they frequently have recourse to the broken cisterns which can hold no water. Not living amid unseen things, they want human sympathies and support, and seek thus to comfort themselves, only, however, to realise, sooner or later, that the very thing which they most craved for and obtained for themselves was but another means of sorrow. No! God is "the God of all comfort," and His mourners are shut up to Him, for He alone can put off their sackcloth and gird them with gladness, and cause them to sing praise to Him and not be silent. Taking up this attitude of waiting alone upon Him, they will soon learn that, if weeping endure for a night, joy cometh in the morning. Let these two things, therefore, be engraven upon our hearts, that He Himself is the source of all our comfort, and that there is no comfort elsewhere to be found.

It should be remarked, also, that to comfort is His character - that, in other words, He is the comforting God. As the apostle says, "Who comforteth us in all our tribulation," and again in chapter 7, "Nevertheless God, that comforteth those that are cast down." So likewise in the Psalms, as, for example, "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." In each of these passages it will be noticed that the verb is in the present tense, that the action is consequently characteristic, and that therefore it is not what God will sometimes do if we wait upon Him, but what He ever does because it is His character and delight to do it. The question need therefore never be raised, Is He willing to comfort? It should rather be this, Are we in the state to receive this blessed ministry from Himself? What a God it is with whom we have to do! One who has told out all His heart in the dark domain of death through the gift of His beloved Son; One who, being "rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us … hath quickened us together with Christ"; and the One who, while we are passing through a world where sorrow and tribulation are our portion, presents Himself to us as a comforting God - the God, as Paul says, "who comforteth us in all our tribulation."

In connection with chapter 7 we learn, moreover, who they are who are qualified for this gracious ministry of comfort. It is, in one word, "those who are cast down," as we have it again in the Psalm, "The Lord upholdeth all that fall, and raiseth up all those that be bowed down." To be in distress and sorrow, in fear and depression, burdened with grief, constitutes an appeal to the heart of God for consolation and succour. How often this was blessedly illustrated in the life of the Lord Jesus on earth! In the synagogue at Nazareth He proclaimed His mission to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and to set at liberty them that were bruised. And in fulfilling it, when He saw the multitude having nothing to eat, He had compassion upon them, and would not send them away fasting to their houses, lest they should faint by the way, for He knew they had travelled a long distance to hear His blessed words. When, moreover, He beheld the widow of Nain, in her unspeakable sorrow, following her only son to the grave, He had compassion upon her, and turned her night of weeping into a morning of joy by raising her son to life and giving him back to her. And is He not the same still? He is not One who cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities, and we may therefore come boldly to the throne of grace for the needed mercy and the seasonable help. What an evangel of consolation this is to weary, burdened, and sorrowing hearts!

The words of your friends reach your ears, and perhaps leave you more hopeless and bewildered than before. His words will reach your soul and give you divine support for human props, and a comfort and peace that death cannot destroy, for His words reveal Himself, and He is more than all you need. Turn yourself about to Him; lift your tear-filled eyes to His; hide not your broken heart from His touch; tell Him the cause of your grief.