A Meditation on Grief and Grace

It should have been the greatest day of celebration. The Tabernacle, Israel’s first collective house of worship, stood complete after months of painstaking labour. For seven days, Moses had performed the sacred inauguration rituals. Now the eighth day had arrived, the first of Nisan, and the priests, led by Aaron, were ready to begin their service before the Lord and all the people. Then tragedy struck with terrible swiftness.

Two of Aaron’s sons, Nadab and Abihu, brought “strange fire” before the Lord, fire “which He had not commanded them” (Leviticus 10:1). In an instant, fire came forth from the presence of G-d, and they died. The celebration became a funeral. What followed reveals something profound about faith and grief. Moses, attempting to comfort his devastated brother, said: “This is what the Lord spoke of when He said, ‘Among those who are near to Me I will show Myself holy; in the sight of all the people I will be honoured'” (Leviticus 10:3). It was as if Moses said: “Aaron, your sons were not evil, they were holy. They died not because they were far from G-d, but because they were near to Him.”

But Scripture records simply: “Aaron remained silent.” His grief was too deep for words.

Later that day, Moses discovered that Aaron had burned the sin offering rather than eating it as prescribed. Concerned for the Law and the community, Moses confronted him. Aaron’s response pierces the heart: “Today they sacrificed their sin offering and their burnt offering before the Lord, but such things as this have happened to me. Would the Lord have been pleased if I had eaten the sin offering today?” (Leviticus 10:19). In other words: “I know I am the High Priest. But I am also a father who has just lost two sons. Would G-d truly want me to act as though nothing had happened?”

When Moses heard this, Scripture tells us, “he approved” (Leviticus 10:20).

Here we witness something remarkable: Moses represents the courage to continue in faith despite tragedy; Aaron represents the courage to grieve honestly. Moses speaks of G-d’s purposes; Aaron speaks of human pain. And both, Scripture suggests, are right. Both are necessary.

There is a curious paradox at the heart of the Christian life. We are told to “rejoice always” (1 Thessalonians 5:16), yet our Saviour is described as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3). We are commanded to “be anxious for nothing” (Philippians 4:6), yet we find ourselves weeping at gravesides, our hearts shattered by loss. Are we failing in our faith when we grieve?

C. S. Lewis, in his searing memoir “A Grief Observed”, written after the death of his wife Joy, confessed: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” Here was a man who had spent his life defending the faith with crystalline clarity, and yet in the face of death, he found himself undone. He did not lose his faith, not ultimately, but neither did he pretend that faith made him immune to the raw terror of loss. “Talk to me about the truth of religion,” he wrote, “and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”

Faith does not anaesthetise us to suffering. If anything, it makes us more alive to it, more vulnerable, more human. When Jesus stood before the tomb of Lazarus, knowing full well that He was about to raise him from death, He wept (John 11:35). He did not offer platitudes. He did not rush to the miracle. He wept with those who wept, because love demands it. There is a kind of piety, well-meaning but ultimately destructive, that treats grief as a failure of trust. The friend who quotes Romans 8:28 “…all things G-d works for the good of those who love him…” before the tears have dried. The church member who suggests that prolonged mourning indicates weak faith. These responses, however kindly intended, ask us to surrender our humanity at the altar of theology.

But consider Paul himself, who wrote those very words about all things working together for good. Was he a stranger to sorrow? He speaks of being “perplexed,” “persecuted,” “struck down” (2 Corinthians 4:8-9). He describes a “thorn in the flesh” that G-d refused to remove despite his repeated prayers (2 Corinthians 12:7-9). This is not the language of a man who has transcended pain. This is the language of someone who has learned to carry it.

The Psalms are filled with lament. “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?” cries the psalmist (Psalm 13:1). “My G-d, my G-d, why have you forsaken me?” (Psalm 22:1), words Jesus Himself would echo from the cross. If lament is woven into the fabric of Scripture, then perhaps it is not the opposite of faith but rather its most honest expression. Yet grief, left alone, can become a prison. There is a second courage required of us: the courage to hope when hope seems foolish, to continue when continuing seems pointless, to believe in resurrection when all we can see is a tomb.

Here is where faith truly distinguishes itself, not in making us immune to sorrow, but in giving us a reason to rise from it. “We do not grieve as those who have no hope,” Paul writes to the Thessalonians (1 Thessalonians 4:13). Notice he does not say we do not grieve. He says we grieve “differently”. Our tears are real, but they are not the final word.

Jesus tells His disciples something almost unbearably strange: “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). He does not promise the absence of trouble. He promises its defeat. The distinction is everything. We are not asked to pretend that suffering doesn’t hurt. We are asked to believe that it doesn’t win. This is the peculiar genius of biblical hope: it is “hope in the midst”, not hope “instead of”. It does not replace our humanity with something angelic. Rather, it redeems our humanity, hallows it, makes it capable of bearing weights that would otherwise crush us. “My grace is sufficient for you,” G-d told Paul, “for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). What an extraordinary claim, that G-d’s strength is most visible not in our triumph but in our fragility.

We are called to be, simultaneously, like Moses and like Aaron, to have the faith that carries on and the humanity that refuses easy comfort. This is not a contradiction to be solved but a tension to be inhabited. When Jesus prayed in Gethsemane, He showed us both. “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me”, this is Aaron’s voice, the voice of human vulnerability, the desperate hope that perhaps suffering might be avoided. But then: “Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39), this is Moses’ voice, the voice of faith that submits to a purpose larger than personal comfort.

The Christian life is not about choosing between these two voices. It is about learning to speak with both. We do not dishonour G-d by grieving deeply. We dishonour our humanity, and the G-d who made us human, when we pretend we do not feel what we feel.

“Blessed are those who mourn,” Jesus said, “for they will be comforted” (Matthew 5:4). Not “blessed are those who pretend everything is fine.” Blessed are those who mourn, who allow themselves to feel the full weight of loss, “for they” will be comforted. The comfort comes, but it comes through the grief, not around it.

Lewis, in the end, found his way through. He had learned to let his wife to go, to trust that G-d’s love for her exceeded even his own. The pain remained, but it had been, somehow, transfigured.

This is what we are offered: not escape from suffering, but transformation through it. Not the abolition of tears, but the promise that “He will wipe every tear from their eyes” (Revelation 21:4), which implies that the tears will have been real, will have been wept, will have been worth wiping away.

We live, for now, between hope and humanity, between the grief that makes us vulnerable and the faith that makes us victorious. And perhaps that is precisely where G-d intends us to be, not yet in the fullness of resurrection, but not abandoned to the darkness of the tomb either. Walking, as Paul describes it, “by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7), but walking nonetheless.

When adversity comes, and it will come, we need not choose between tears and trust. We can bring both to the foot of the cross, where our suffering Saviour understands them equally. We can grieve, fully and honestly, and we can hope, stubbornly and unreasonably. We can be, at once, heartbroken and unbroken.

For this is the gospel’s great claim: that our humanity need not be sacrificed to our faith, nor our faith to our humanity. In Christ, both are redeemed, both are honoured, both find their true home. And in that strange, difficult, beautiful tension, we discover what it means to be fully alive.

Adivalter Sfalsin