God's Grief

This morning I picked up a devotional book called, For Such A Time as This, by Hanna Reichel, turned to page 46 and read this bit of verse from Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

People turn to God when they are sore bestead;
pray for help, ask for peace and bread;

seek release from being ill, guilty, and dead;
so do they all, all, Christians and heathens.

People turn to God when He is sore bestead,
find him poor, scorned, without roof and bread,
devoured by weakness and sin, near dead:
Christians stand by God in God’s grief.

God turns to all people when they are sore bestead,

feeds their souls and bodies with God’s bread;

for Christians and heathens at the cross

God meets death: and gives both of them relief.

(translated from German by Martin Tel and Hanna Reichel)

This week our grief and confusion, our fear and anger are heightened by the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Bonhoeffer wrote this poem while he was imprisoned. He expresses the idea that people of all faiths or none will turn to God when in deep distress – “sore bestead,” as he says. He also suggests that, when there is great suffering in the world, God, too, is “sore bestead” right along with us.

We know God has a special concern for any who are suffering injustice and oppression. We read in Jesus’ Parable of the Judgment on the Nations, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40).

All people cry out to God when they find themselves in the darkest valley. But the difference for a Christian is this essential thing: to cry out to God when we see another in that darkest valley. To be a Christian is to make the commitment to stand with the hungry, the persecuted, the stranger – just as God does.

As Bonhoeffer wrote, “Christians stand by God in God’s grief.” Amen.

Photo by Outcast India on Unsplash