grief on Stranger

Lord: In our times of weakness and our hours of need, Yours is the strength that enables us to carry on, Yours the shoulder we rest our heads upon. When our load is heavy and too much to bear, Yours a...

We bring before you, O Lord, the troubles and perils of people and nations, the sighing of prisoners and captives, the sorrows of the bereaved, the necessities of strangers, the helplessness of the we...

God of grace, power and glory, and our Heavenly Father: You raise up nations in your grace and holiness; and You bring down nations who go after and serve other gods of their own making. You are good–...

In a time of acute crisis, when death sneaks into houses and shops, when you may feel healthy yourself but you may be carrying the virus without knowing it, when every stranger on the street is a thre...

Even desolation is a world to be explored.

A good friend of mine lost her child recently. Unspeakable, seismic sadness. When she called, I listened in stunned silence as she told me what had happened. My mind was racing, trying to comprehend t...

Shock is a temporary escape from reality. As long as it is temporary, it is good. But if a person should prefer to remain in this dreamworld rather than face the reality of his loss, obviously it woul...

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cri...

In grief we know the worst of what we feel, But who can tell the end of what we fear?

After the adrenalin rush of the death and funeral, bereaved people often feel deserted and overwhelmed with loneliness.

This is the Hour of Lead— Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons recollect the Snow— First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go.

Should his heart break and the grief pour out, it would flow over the whole earth, it seems, and yet, no one sees it.

Grief has no distance…Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.

Light griefs can speak; great ones are dumb.

For one drop calls another down, till we are drowned in seas of grief.

No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning. I keep on swallowing.

As we feel the pain of our own losses, our grieving hearts open our inner eye to a world in which losses are suffered far beyond our own little world of family, friends, and colleagues. It is the worl...

You could put the meaning of original sin this way: given a choice we would rather sulk than rejoin the party.

There is a haunting line in the musical Les Misérables: There’s a grief that can’t be spoken. There’s a pain goes on and on. It’s true. There is a grief that seems all-encompassing. It seems like it ...

Grief dares us to love once more.

Grief is like a bear. It retreats to its cave, sometimes for long periods, and then one day you turn around and discover that the bear has crept up behind you. It scares you half to death. The fright ...

Feeling better…I also felt a sense of betrayal of my husband, even though I rationally knew that sustained grief could be morbid. Because grief may become a substitute for the dead one, giving up our ...

In grief nothing “stays put.”

Was ever grief like mine?

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garme...

Bereaved people do not grieve in stages—grief is not linear, but is chaotic—an ‘all over the shop’ experience.

God—our Father ... our Savior ... our Counselor and Friend: Thank you for daring to meet us at the most unlikely places, and in the most unexpected times of our lives. Thank you for redeeming our pain...

Lord Jesus—the same yesterday, today and tomorrow, and the author of change, who’s constantly doing “a new thing,” which makes us sit up and take notice. We admit, we’d be more comfortable with a pred...

Context 1 Peter is traditionally attributed to the apostle Peter. It is addressed to Christian communities in diaspora, scattered across Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey) who were experiencing social ma...

In 2011, the online publication, Slate, surveyed its readers about their experiences of grief. Apparently, grief was a hot topic for many readers because they received nearly 8,000 responses within on...