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What can we say, and what can we not say when it comes to the deep sadness of grief and suffering?

In my experience often the words spoken, or the brief bible verse out of context written on a sympathy card, are well intentioned but tend to entirely miss the mark in what is needed for the person in the midst of a profound trial or sadness. It can feel a little like Job’s less than helpful friends surrounding him in his despair vainly trying to explain or account for his experience. Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that there is a time to speak, but there is also a time to be silent – to sit quietly beside others in their time of trial, offering nothing other than supportive presence.

Many years ago during such a time for me a dear friend in ministry gave me a verse that I found extremely helpful. It is Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children forever”. There are things that the Lord our God knows about our circumstances and situation, but that knowledge belongs to him alone and stays secret to us. We can try to plumb the depths of asking ‘why’ but that will often be in vain. As we read in Isaiah 55, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” The Lord knows but we do not.

However, there are still ‘things revealed’ and we can know those truths with confidence and certainty. The Lord has revealed to us his goodness, his grace, and his commitment to his people – “They will be my people, and I will be their God.”

It is in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ that these truths are most clearly revealed. Two revelations stand out for those enduring hardships.

First, in the coming of Jesus, in his incarnation, we learn that our God is a God who knows and understands our situation. In Hebrews 2:10 we read that God made Jesus “the author of our salvation perfect through suffering.” Now it is not as if Jesus was not already morally perfect, but by coming and suffering he now perfectly understands our situation from the inside. He has our flesh, with human blood pumping through his veins. He is fully and completely human, one of us. As the author goes on to argue, “since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity” (2:14). In the incarnation of Jesus, God now knows from the inside what it is to be a human being in a fallen broken world. In the midst of the pain and suffering of this world we can be certain of this one thing, that Jesus knows and understands our situation. Our God is not a distant and detached God. Not only does he see you in your grief, but he knows grief intimately from the inside.

Second, in the cross of Jesus we see that God does not just know but he also cares.  We do not know the secret things and the higher purposes of God in our lives, but we do know what the cross reveals to us. These events cannot be because God does not care or that he is indifferent and remote.  That simply cannot be the answer, because God himself came and entered into not just our sufferings, but did so to infinite degrees beyond anything that we will ever suffer. He loves us that much, and he hates suffering that much, that he was willing to come and plunge himself into the mess of this world so that one day he could end evil and brokenness without ending us.

Whatever conclusions we come to when confronted by suffering we simply cannot conclude that God does not care or understand.

The incarnation reveals that God knows. The cross reveals that God cares.

Now this does not give us all the answers found only in the ‘secret things’ of God, but it does reveal something important. We know that the God who has the answers is a God we can trust. There can be no lurking doubt that God is distant from us, or that he lacks compassion toward us and is unmoved by our predicament.

We can say with humble confidence: “I don’t have all the answers, but when I see what Jesus went through I realise that God understands my feelings of anger and pain. I can’t always work out what God is doing, but I can always trust him.”

Ecclesiastes 3 reminds us that there is a time to speak, but there is also a time to be silent – to sit quietly beside others in their time of trial, offering nothing other than supportive presence.