We are, “Rejoicing with rejoicing people, weeping with weeping people” (Robertson).

Part 3 (of 3)

Yesterday:
“Rejoice with them that do rejoice.”
When our brothers and sisters rejoice, we are glad!

Today:
“And weep with them that weep.”
Where and when I grew up in the south, when a family in the community had a tragedy or death, everyone in the neighborhood would bring food to the house.  Pies, cakes, casseroles, cookies, you name it, and they brought it.  It was not uncommon to have a house full of friends consoling the family in their time of need.  People cared for people.  Even if they didn’t know them well, they still offered their help.  This is what the community did back then.

I suppose the practice began because of the principles found in Romans 12.  Today, there seems to be very little sense of “community” the way I recall it from my childhood.  The comforting thing is that in the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ, this caring for those in need and “weeping with those who are weeping” is still the norm, or at least it should be.

In Job, the oldest book in the Bible, in his time of incredible need, he had three friends who understood this principle.

“Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that was come upon him, they came every one from his own place; Eliphaz the Temanite, and Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite: for they had made an appointment together to come to mourn with him and to comfort him” (Job 2:11).

They began well, but as the book of Job points out, eventually, their thoughts were misguided at best.

When Lazarus died, the people who knew him and his sisters, Mary and Martha, wanted to help with their burden.

“And many of the Jews came to Martha and Mary, to comfort them concerning their brother” (John 11:19).

Jesus met a funeral procession one day. In His compassion, He comforted the widow of Nain as they were on the way to bury her only son.

“And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not” (Luke 7:13).

Of course, we cannot raise the dead as Jesus did, the ultimate “comfort” in their need.  But we can be there, offer a few words, and even grieve in silence with them.  Let’s remember to point our friends to the Lord in their grief.

“Sorrow at the death of friends is not improper.  It is right to weep.  It is the expression of nature and religion does not forbid or condemn it.  All that religion does in the case is to temper and chasten our grief; to teach us to mourn with submission to God; to weep without complaining, and to seek to banish tears, not by hardening the heart or forgetting the friend, but by bringing the soul, made tender by grief, to receive the sweet influences of religion, and to find calmness and peace in the God of all consolation”[1] (Barnes).

Believers let’s rejoice or weep with our friends.  Whatever their need.

[1] Albert Barnes, Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible, the electronic version in eSword.