Saturday, September 6, 2025
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Just sit
Love knows what we can do. Let’s begin. Perhaps God is only waiting for our kind intention.
—Brother Lawrence, Practice of the PresenceÂ
When my friend’s stepmom died after just a few weeks suffering with pancreatic cancer, I know many hearts were broken. Our sadness for them poured out, and we could only wait for them to feel the love that was all around them. Their memories are sweet, their hopes were high, their life with Sandy was full, but in the moments following her death they were as empty as empty could be.
I imagine the family is coping as best they can with their grief and the expressed condolences of many others, while they  finalize a funeral and begin the process of resolving an estate, since Sandy’s husband died a few years ago. There is so much to do, when what they want is to just sit in the sun, or walk in the rain, and weep until the weeping stops, and then with wan smiles slowly return quietly to their life together.
Henri Nouwen says something about the nature of compassion:
Let us not underestimate how hard it is to be compassionate. Compassion is hard because it requires the inner disposition to go with others to the place where they are weak, vulnerable, lonely, and broken. But this is not our spontaneous response to suffering.
What we desire most is to do away with suffering by fleeing from it or finding a quick cure for it. As busy, active, relevant people, we want to earn our bread by making a real contribution. This seems to mean first and foremost doing something to show that our presence makes a difference.
And so we ignore our greatest gift, which is our ability to enter into solidarity with those who suffer. Those who can sit with their friend, not knowing what to say but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life into a dying heart. Those who are not afraid to hold a hand in gratitude, to shed tears of grief, and to let a sigh of distress arise straight from the heart can break through paralyzing boundaries and witness the birth of a new fellowship – the fellowship of the broken.
I belong to the fellowship of the broken, and I’m guessing you do too. When my dad died  my friend Ron showed up from a hundred miles away and hugged me in the funeral home. I won’t forget his hug, or his decision to come. “Of course,” he said when I thanked him. But I knew this was a special gift he offered me.
I’ve officiated a few funerals – for my great-aunt, for a Harley biker whose wife was one of my News-Gazette newspaper carriers, for a good friend who died alone in a nursing home during Covid, for a young victim of suicide. We sang, prayed, carried the coffin to the hearse, but mostly there were simply too many words. Still, hugs with tears made up for all those words. We’re all in this together.
Behold, God is my helper;
   the Lord sustains my life.
(1 Thessalonians 4, Psalm 96, Luke 4)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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