On Consolation

It was early Monday morning when I definitively learned I would help a friend bury his dad the next day. They didn't know exactly what they wanted, but they wanted an homme d'église saying something, anything as they lowered him down. Ils avaient raison. Because saying goodbye to a dad with no one speaking truth by our sides is desperately hopeless indeed.

It was another one of those out of body twilight zone moments, as if I'm watching a film of an unlikely story. How did this kid from Pennsylvania end up in a bourgeois home outside of Paris to help lay to rest a man he doesn't know? Ce cheminement avec Dieu est drôlement étonnant, I wrote to a friend. Don't ask questions, count it as the extreme honor that it is.

At midnight the evening prior, I was led to write about the privilege it was to share these moments with this family I did not know. That I was not there to make their grief disappear, but I was there to share it with them, live it with them. And that reminded me of our God who promises the same. I read words declaring who our God is, that he is close to the broken-hearted, that he is merciful, compassionate, full of goodness, an ever-present help. Then I read words of our Jesus, sent to do the same. A man who had a habit of suffering, as it's put in French, a man who sympathizes with our weakness, a man who understands and is ready to share it all by our sides. A man who promises rest for our weary and heavy-laiden souls. A man who wept before the grave of his good friend, because he loved him, because he was overwhelmed with sadness, because he was revolted by death.

We don't have a God distant and indifferent, but a God who understands and shares and enters into pain with us. This is shocking. This is unlike anything we know in this earthly experience. This should surpass our understanding. What king is like this?

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort... 

He is the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He is the source of mercy and comfort. And what do we human beings need more in this life than mercy and comfort? We who recoil at hardened dictators, demanding bosses, exigent teachers, we look to this King ready to sit at our side as we sob uncontrollably and know he must be good, he must be true, he must be what we've been seeking all this time.

...who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

And if he consoles us -- and he does -- he does it not just for our own well-being, but so that we can extend this consolation to others when our turn arises. He wants us and expects us and nudges us to pass it on. And here we see the overflowing fountain of generosity that comes from the heart of God: spilling over and onward and outward, using awkward and weak vessels to get the job done.

But don't miss what's implied. If we're passing on consolation that came from God, that means we very likely received God's consolation from someone. The first person you called who dropped everything and came to sit with you, it was not just a friend, it was God himself. The friends that pulled themselves together to order flowers and make you meals, that was more than friends, that was God himself. The person who didn't try to cheer you up, but sat and cried in silence with you, that was the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. And it also implies that if we are not opening ourselves up in vulnerability to allow others to comfort us, if we are hiding our grief or doing it alone, we are resisting the consolation that God offers. 

And now I realize what exactly was going on in my presence at the graveside. It resembles only moreso an unlikely story, and all the more an honor.

Bref, consolation comes.

Don’t back down, concentrate on seeing
The breakers in the bar, the neighbor’s greeting
My brother had a daughter
The beauty that she brings, illumination