It sometimes seems as though our world is full of grief. In the last year we have mourned the premature loss of loved ones, the pain of their parting made much more acute by the loss of contact. We are used to keeping grief at arm’s length, but it has now visited us close as it has done to most of humanity for most of history.
GRIEF IN SCRIPTURE
The story of scripture is full of grief, in every part save two (to which we will return) – but it is often expressed in ways that are strikingly different from our own experience.
There is a beautiful cameo of grief in Genesis 21. Sarah, being barren, had told Abraham to have sex with Hagar her slave, and Hagar gives birth to Ishmael. But when Sarah then bears Isaac, she fears Ishmael will be a rival to him, so insists Hagar is driven away with her son to die. When they run out of water in the hot desert, Hagar
‘…went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot, for she said, “Let me not look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept’ [Genesis 21:16].
The despair we recognise, as we do her turning away; so often grief and death are too much to contemplate, and we turn away from our own pain and that of others, making grief a lonely experience.
