The house was full for eleven days and then it was not, and she can tell you what every single person brought.
Casseroles, obviously. Four of them, and three of the dishes had names written on the bottom in permanent marker so they could be returned. A cross made of white carnations that came off the top of the casket and stood in the hallway until it dropped its petals on the carpet. Eight cards. A tin of coffee. Somebody's aunt brought a whole ham.
And words. Everybody brought words.
Her daughter was twenty six. She died in June, on a Tuesday, and the church filled the sanctuary and the overflow and sang until the walls moved, and it was beautiful, and she meant it when she said so.
Then the pastor, who has known her since she was a girl and who wept at that funeral himself, preached about how the Lord's ways are higher than our ways. And a deacon told her in the parking lot afterward that the enemy meant it for harm but God would use it. And her prayer partner of nineteen years held both her hands in the vestibule and told her that her daughter's life was a seed that was going to bring in a harvest.
All of them love her. Every one of them has been at her side for twenty years. She would not trade a single one of them.
And each of those sentences went into her like a splinter and is still in there.
She has not been able to say that to anybody, because in her church that would sound like she was talking against the work of God, and she is not. She is a woman whose daughter is dead and who cannot use one word of what she has been given.
Then, in the third week, when the house had gone quiet, a woman she barely knows from the Tuesday night group knocked on the door with nothing in her hands at all.
If that is a doorstep anybody recognizes, the rest of this page is for you.
There is a lament that admits it has nothing
I want to put a verse in front of you that nobody preaches, and I want to say up front why it matters. It matters because it is God's own word admitting that some griefs have nothing to be compared to.
What thing shall I take to witness for thee? what thing shall I liken to thee, O daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort thee, O virgin daughter of Zion? for thy breach is great like the sea: who can heal thee?Lamentations 2:13
Read it again slowly. That is the prophet, under inspiration, standing in front of a grief and saying out loud that he cannot find anything to set beside it. He has no comparison. He has no equivalent. He asks four questions and answers none of them, and then he says the breach is great like the sea.
That is in the Bible. The inspired writer, looking for something to say that would comfort, and reporting that he came up with nothing.
You are standing exactly where Scripture stands, and you were never obliged to find a comparison for a twenty six year old daughter. Lamentations 2:13 is the written word declining to liken a grief to anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put that admission into the canon and left it there.
So when a splinter goes in, understand what happened. Somebody tried to liken it. Higher ways, an enemy's intent, a seed and a harvest: every one of those is an attempt to set something beside a loss so it can be measured. The prophet already tried that and told us plainly it does not work.
You have the book itself standing with you in that, and you were never the first one to find every comparison useless. That is written into Lamentations 2 in the plainest terms, and the Spirit who inspired it does not require a mother to accept an equivalence before He will come near her.
Church people reach for the biggest thing they have
Now hear me, because I am not going to let a splinter turn into a grudge in a woman who has twenty years invested in those people.
Understand what is happening in a church parking lot. Your deacon looked at a casket with a twenty six year old in it. He has spent his whole life believing that God is bigger than everything, and now he is standing in front of something that has knocked the wind out of him, and he needs that to still be true out loud, right now, in the parking lot, or he will not make it to his car.
So he says the biggest thing he owns. He is not preaching at you. He is holding on.
Same with your prayer partner. Nineteen years of praying with you and she has never once been able to fix anything as big as this. A seed and a harvest is what she reached for so she would not have to stand there empty in front of you, because standing there empty in front of somebody you love is one of the hardest things a human being ever does.
Their sentences were not aimed at you. They were the sound of people who love you refusing to walk away.
Keep them all. Take the splinters out anyway.
Right now, as you read this, you are carried by a God who has never needed the loss made smaller before He would step into the room. Lamentations 2:13 is the written word refusing to shrink a breach that is great like the sea, and His Spirit has been in that house since the eleventh day when everybody went home.
Empty hands are not nothing
Here is what the woman from the Tuesday night group did, and I want it named properly because it is the most spiritual thing that happened in that house.
She knocked. She had nothing. She said, "I have not got anything to say to you." And then she came in and sat on the sofa and stayed two hours.
That is not an absence of ministry. That is ministry in its oldest form. The first thing Job's friends did, before they ruined it, was sit on the ground with him seven days and not say a word, and Scripture reports that they did it because they saw that his grief was very great. Those seven days are the only part of that visit God does not correct at the end of the book.
Empty hands are what you bring when you have understood the size of the thing. Full hands are usually what a frightened person brings so they do not have to stand there.
You are ministered to by a woman who understood the size of it, and you were seen in that living room more accurately than you have been seen since June. The written word ranks seven silent days above every speech that followed, and the Spirit is the one who moves a near stranger to a door with nothing in her hands.
So here is where this leaves you, in a front room, in the third week, with the ham long gone.
The God who came into this world did not send a comparison down. Let that land, because church people can miss it while they are quoting Him. He did not transmit an explanation from a safe distance. He came, into a body, into a house, into a village with a funeral going on in it, and He stood outside a tomb with two grieving sisters and He wept, and He had the power to end the whole scene in His pocket the entire time.
He came with empty hands on purpose. That is the pattern.
You are sat with by that same Christ tonight, and you were sat with on the night the last casserole dish went back. Lamentations 2:13 refuses to liken the breach to anything, John 11:35 shows the Lord crying rather than explaining, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes both of them present in a front room in this century.
And I will not tell you the ache lifts by Sunday. Comfort belongs to Him and He gives it in His own way and His own timing, and an ache still in you this week is not a report on your faith or on twenty years of faithfulness.
But the second weight comes off tonight, and that one is yours to set down. You have carried an accusation that was never true, that a woman who cannot use a good church sentence must be bitter, or offended, or in unbelief. Lamentations 2 stands in the written word as the permanent answer to that, and the Holy Spirit is not standing in the vestibule waiting for you to receive a better explanation.
If the weight of any of this ever turns dangerous, and staying safe genuinely comes into question, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor the truth about how the nights are. Getting another human being physically near you is not a failure of faith, and no woman in that church would want it any other way.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in that front room, however low your voice goes. The authority to speak to what has been sitting in your chest since June was given to you in Christ, and it does not depend on how strong you feel tonight. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it. And whatever He does with the ache afterward is His to decide, in His own way and His own timing.
- Explanations handed to me in the parking lot, you are not comfort and you were never asked to be. Lamentations 2:13 has the prophet finding nothing to liken a grief to, and I stop apologizing for being unable to use a good sentence.
- Accusation that I am in unbelief, get out in the name of Jesus. The written word left the prophet's four unanswered questions standing, and the Comforter is not waiting in the vestibule for me to accept anybody's comparison.
- Lord, You wept outside a tomb before You said one useful word, as John 11:35 says. I thank You that You came with empty hands, and I am sitting down in this room with You now.
Lamentations 2:13
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