“This just feels wrong. This isn’t the way it’s supposed to be.”
I’ve said this many times in my life.
I said it in 8th grade when a friend committed suicide.
I said it when I watched Grandma sobbing beside the body of the man she’d loved her whole life, clutching his wedding band in her delicate hands.
I said it in 10th grade when I stood beside Pappaw’s grave, staring at the trees in the distance as the pastor spoke, clinching my fists to keep the tears from falling.
This time I was in my early 30’s sitting with my Daddy outside King Daughter’s Hospital in Yazoo City, MS where Grandma was losing her battle with Leukemia.
The familiar mixture of sorrow and anger welled up as I spit out the words.
Daddy put his arm around me while I sobbed. He waited until I was quiet, and in his deep gentle voice, he said, “Nothing about death is right. Death didn’t exist until sin entered the world. It doesn’t feel right because we weren’t made to experience death.”
Through the years I’ve often thought of Daddy’s statement. And now, as I am walking through another time of grief, the words come back to me. We weren’t made for this.
We weren’t made for this, yet we still experience it. What are we supposed to do since we don’t have the resources or strength within ourselves to walk through these shadows?
In His mercy, God doesn’t leave us to our own resources or strength. He walks through it with us. He put on our flesh, He put on our feelings, in order to be with us. And He felt this exact feeling as He stood in front of the grave of His friend Lazarus.
Jesus got mad, like we do when death strikes our loved ones. But He didn’t get angry at God, like we often do. He directed His anger at the source of the problem. He was angry at death and sin. And when He wept, He didn’t leak out a few tears or get a lump in His throat. He burst into tears.
He felt angry that the people He loved had to undergo such pain. He was indignant that sin dared to wreak such havoc. And He grieved. Rev. Wally Bumpus puts it this way. “Jesus was grieved at what death had done to the crown of God’s creation.”
Jesus was saying “This is not the way it is supposed to be.” He acknowledged the pain-filled reality.
Then He called His friend out of the grave.
Jesus felt the anger, the soul-deep turbulence that we feel when death invades our space. He is qualified to walk through grief with us. As the One who destroyed death by rising from the dead, He has the power to comfort us like no other.
Knowing that my Jesus felt this same “this isn’t right” feeling changes the way I handle my grief. Instead of trying to push it aside and ignore it, I can follow His example and acknowledge this pain-filled reality. My grief can be mingled with hope because the way things are now is not the way things will always be.
Because of Jesus, one day death will be fully dead, we will be fully alive, and things will be the way they are supposed to be for all eternity.
