Sackcloth & Ashes: Letting Others See Our Hurting Hearts
A memory popped up on my Snapchat, and I ended up down a rabbit memory hole, thumbing through my snap history back to when I first downloaded the app. The posts were snapshots of a girl with a smile, a witty comment, thriving through her high school years. Those posts offered tribute to a false narrative, the small controlled glimpse into my life I allowed my peers to see.
The truth is, I don’t remember the girl in those pictures. She didn’t actually exist. My journals, and my personal memories bear a record of a girl struck with grief by her mom’s illness, the subsequent failed corrective surgery, her fears of abandonment by peers, and an ache to understand the God who remained quiet through her family’s pain. The girl in the pictures silently struggled with depression, anxiety attacks every morning, and grief.
Praise God, He is good, and He did lead me out of that season and into a season of peace and reprieve. But, lately, especially with the pandemic, I’be found myself back in the season of struggle.
A few nights before writing this, I had another depressive episode, and I was freshly experiencing the exposed, broken wound in my brain. In the past, I sought to layer enough band-aids of caffeine, entertainment, and hang-outs to keep everything contained. It didn’t work to fix it, but it worked to hide it from everyone else.
But I’ve learned enough in the last year to know that covering-up brokenness is not the way of Jesus. He’s a healer. And instead of covering the wound this time, I shared with my prayer group over the phone, and fell apart. They reacted in compassion and collectively we prayed over the phone. It put me in a place of submission and acceptance that I have something broken in me that needs healing, and it positioned my heart to participate willingly in the first steps towards that healing. I share all of this because I want to talk about the position of Christians in regard to suffering.
Suffering is a broad word which encompasses a lot. It’s a catch-all that includes religious persecution, miscarriages, illness of any form in the body and mind, injustice, rape, poverty, abuse, bullying, a broken marriage, death… if it is something that manifests grief or anguish in your heart and soul, you are experiencing suffering.
Suffering is defined in the dictionary as: The state of undergoing pain, distress, or hardship. If you are reading this, I know you have suffered. This world is fundamentally broken, and we are flawed as sinful. Suffering is a natural by-product of this world and sin, and in response to suffering, there is grief.
It is ignorant for Christians to take the position that suffering is something that can be eradicated from this present life. It is like believing gravity can be removed from our planet. In my struggles with the trials I found myself in, I began studying and seeking to understand the nature of God and how suffering fits into my faith. Who I encountered is a God familiar with pain. I encountered a God who instituted ways for His people to process suffering and to seek restoration and healing. A God who said:
“For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” -Psalm 51:16-17
We, followers of the Most High, believe in a Messiah who suffered the greatest suffering, and endured the deepest pain for the sake of our salvation. Which means, when we enter His presence, we are in the presence of one who knows the reality of our pain. So, why do we hide our suffering from fellow believers?
In ancient Israel, there was actually a practice of putting on sackcloth and ashes as a way to mark one’s self in mourning. One would tear off the clothes of their regular life and clothe themselves in the sackcloth and ashes as a physical action of their grief.
In the book of Psalms, of the 150 psalms, 42 are psalms of lament. A lament is defined as a passionate expression of grief or sorrow. These are songs of anguish lifted to God in the midst of suffering. There is a book of the Bible called Lamentations, written as a lament for the sin of Israel and their consequent suffering from their disobedience.
“The elders of Daughter Zion sit on the ground in silence; They have sprinkled dust on their heads and put on sackcloth. The young women of Jerusalem have bowed their heads to the ground. My eyes fail from weeping, I am in torment within; My heart is poured out on the ground because my people are destroyed, because children and infants faint in the streets of the city.” - Lamentations 2:10-11
As one flips through the scriptures, passage after passage greets readers with people of the bible working through grief.
“Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye is wasted from grief; my soul and my body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my iniquity, and my bones waste away.” - Psalm 31:9-10
“Surely he [Jesus] has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” -Isaiah 53:4-6
“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”-Job 1:20-22
So, why do we as Christians ignore suffering? Or worse, why do we look at suffering as something that needs to be immediately “conquered away?”
There have been a lot of conversations about achieving “victory” in this life. I’m sorry, but some of the applications of this word are heresy that will fail you. Jesus does not offer his victory over death as a means to cheat suffering in this life. What Jesus offers is something that is so much more real and profound in response to a broken world. He offers victory at the end of life. Suffering might exist, but it will not forever have a hold of you. He is preparing a place for you that will be a place of eternal peace, joy, and praise. As I read the scriptures, it strikes me that God never desired us to pressure our brothers and sisters who are in pain to force themselves to not be in pain anymore.
“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn't be sad, or depressed, or ill, or struggling with trauma, or grieving that strained relationship, or mourning the death of that loved one. Just declare you have victory over it, smile, and go on with your life! Yay, Jesus!” Has anyone ever said that to you before?
In truth, I don’t know that Jesus. The Jesus I have met through the scripture has sat beside me, silent in unity with my pain, and has wrapped his scarred arms around me. This is Jesus, who acknowledges that this life is broken, and sometimes the only response is lament. He offers us the ability to speak to our discomfort and our questions for our circumstances, and also be able to say, “I believe in a Savior, but right now, I am in pain.” He holds our hand, and waits. He stops and sits with us in the middle of whatever we are experiencing.
Did you know, there is no verse in scripture that promises that God will wipe away our tears this side of heaven? I noticed as I researched this article. This is what is promised to us in the book of Revelation:
“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.” -Revelation 21:4
Catch the future tense, “will.” God sees your tears on this earth, and every single one of them is recorded.
“You [God] have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” -John 16:22
“He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, “Behold, this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”- Isaiah 25:8-9
God promises that we will endure suffering on earth, it’s the reality of this earth, and He’s going to allow that suffering to occur. But, He will be sitting with you through every second, holding your hand. He promises that when you pass through death into eternity, He will personally wipe away the accumulation of every single tear you wept, because He has remembered every tear. So, if our suffering is familiar and known by God, why do we work so hard to hide it from the body of Christ?
I think there is pride in ourselves to not be the “weak one.” There is a fear of interrupting life, of bringing down the mood, or making people uncomfortable. The truth is, yes, that all might happen. But we, the church, need it.
When we only congregate around joy, we are often shocked when grief interrupts. But was it interrupting? Perhaps the grief had been there all along in the silence of our hearts and lives? Have we considered that we glorify Christ in our suffering as well as our joy? It’s why we practice confession and repentance, the acknowledgement that we are broken and need a savior.
But Paul writes:
“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison,”-2 Corinthians 4:16-17
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 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. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”-2 Corinthians 1:3-5
Let us practice lamenting. Let us lament, that we can remind ourselves of the great promises that this world and the suffering it brings is not eternal. Let us not shrink back from permitting joy and grief to exist in the same room, and let us not lose hope in our Savior who suffers with us.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the dominion forever and ever. Amen.” - 1 Peter 5:10-11
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mia Grace loves sunflowers, words, old hardcover books, and fountain pens. She adores Jesus Christ, and seeks to listen and obey him in her life. Her life verse is Isaiah 52:7, and her prayer is for every girl to grasp the height, weight, depth, width, and power of Christ's love for them.