Healing for the One Overwhelmed By Excessive Grief

CORINTHIANS 2, chapter 2 and verses 5–11, holds open before us the matter of a sinner being excessively punished — to the point of perhaps being overwhelmed by undue grief. This article is not about a generic grief that seems excessive. It’s about a grief that a believer may have inflicted on him or her that potentially casts them out into the farthest reaches of the wilderness of their own spirituality — to a point where identity is separated-of-soul and abandoned.

Godly compassion was made for reconciling a sinner in the love of Christ, yet, because of bad counsel or a hard heart, compassion may be too little or too late.

This is as much about compassion as it is about grief, for an excessive grief, which is, by nature, unjust and unfair and therefore not right, is caused through a vacuous void of compassion.

Compassion – A Veritable Sign of God’s Grace

What better example of compassion do we have for humanity in humanity’s condition than grace — that the Father sought us, wrought us through repentance, and bought us through his Son?

God showed us such compassion that he did for us that which we could never do for ourselves. We’re to be ever grateful.

And we’re to mirror that grace in living redemptive lives.

It’s no longer any good that we would hold a person up to an experience of excessive sorrow. As a saved person, that compassion God has shown us is to be shown through us to others, exemplifying how we’ve understood that meaning and value in that grace.

It’s no longer sufficient to ever hold something against someone, especially where that holding back produces in them excessive grief.

We show our God’s Lordship over us by our obedient surrender of compassion, forgiving those we think don’t deserve it.

But they do deserve our forgiveness for what God has done for us. Our forgiving them isn’t about what they did or did not do; it’s about what Christ has done.

Such compassion that was extravagantly shown to us is to be our model; we’re purveyors of that self-same extravagant grace.

It’s not God’s will at all that anyone we know should have to endure excessive grief.

Compassion facilitates a transaction from an excessive grief to an abundance of healing.

Compassion makes a way for something irretrievably unjust, unfair and inappropriate to be made just, fair and right.

As believers, we have this privilege and responsibility: to embody compassion in all our undertakings.

© 2015 Steve Wickham.