Crushed With Grief - The One Year Book of Hope

Crushed With Grief

[Jesus] took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he began to be filled with anguish and deep distress. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and watch with me.” –Matthew 26:37-38

“My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.” It may sound strange to say this, but I remember feeling relieved when I read this verse. I know what it feels like to be crushed with grief. Flattened out by it. Feeling that it is pressing the life out of me and stealing the air around me. I know what it feels like to wonder if I will ever be out from underneath it.

Whenever I read that Jesus was “crushed with grief,” tears come. I feel a sense of kinship with Jesus’ pain and a sense of relief that he understands what mine feels like. I can’t receive instruction on living with pain from someone who has never hurt. I can’t receive encouragement to hold on to hope for the future from someone who has never wrangled with death. But I can listen to and receive from this Jesus who knows what it feels like to be filled with anguish and deep distress.

And from the rest of the story recorded in this passage, I see that he also understands the loneliness of grief that has at times overwhelmed me. Even those closest to him could not stay awake and pray with him in the most agonizing hours of his life.

But it was not only his disciples who abandoned him. As he prepared for the Cross, prepared to drink the cup of the wrath of God, he anticipated the ultimate loneliness and abandonment that was ahead: when God would turn his face away from his Son. This would be a desperate loneliness that would cause him to cry out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46).

Do you know what it feels like for your soul to be crushed with grief to the point that you wonder if you can survive it? Have you felt forsaken and abandoned by those you hoped would be there in your most difficult hour? If so, Jesus understands. In your anguish and deep distress, find comfort in companionship with him.

Abandoned One, it is such a relief to know that you fully understand from experience the grief that has overcome my mind and emotions. Will you also show me what it looks like to emerge from this place of pain into peace?

DIGGING DEEPER