“Weeping may linger for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.” Psalm 30:5b

Our hearts break for those whose hearts are breaking. We see pain written on a face and hear catches in the voice. Remembered pain, converges with today’s plain, and our hearts break all over again. Be it our friends in their losses, our own personal losses, or the agonizing pictures we see of  weeping on our screens . . . Our hearts break, for those whose hearts are breaking.

Our instinct is to do something,  anything  to ease the pain, to undo the reality, to turn the situation around. We try as we’re able,  to offer consolation.  But in the throes of death, we cannot change what already is.   In the unfairness of life, we wonder why some people suffer multiple losses. We agonize over  random cruelty life brings?  We question why our world has to be so painful, and why some people carry  so much hardship in their lives?

The psalmist says, “Weeping may linger for a night but joy come in the morning.” Psalm 30:5b  Yet in that in-between time, between weeping and the time of joy, is the numbness of bewilderment, questions, regrets, heartache and tears. It is there, that Jesus meets us with his tears, to hold us in, “Our in-between world.”

Today, in the loss of another, too soon death of an extended family member . . .  I’m reminded of Ann Weem’s poem, of Jesus weeping with those who weep, and joining for all time the weeping of our world.

“In the quiet time this image comes to me: Jesus weeping
Jesus wept
And in his weeping
He joined himself forever
To those who mourn
He stands now throughout all time
This Jesus weeping
With arms about the weeping ones
‘Blessed are those who mourn
For they shall be comforted
He stands with the mourners
For his name is God-with-us
Jesus wept,
‘Blessed are those who weep, for they shall be comforted.’

Someday, God will wipe the tears from Rachel’s eyes
In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,
there is a deafening alleluia
rising from the souls
of those who weep
and of those who weep with those who weep
If you watch, you will see
the hand of God
putting the stars back in their skies
one by one.”
Ann Weems “Psalms of Lament”