being there

Most times it's in the days and weeks when the funeral's been and gone that bereavement gets really tough.

In the days leading up to a service of thanksgiving and the final 'committal' into the hands of God, there are loads of tings to be done. There's a therapy in that.

But once the funeral's been and gone, that therapy goes too. People start drifting away, as it were, as well.

It's easy for others to slip back into their normal routines. And soon there aren't the visitors that there were in the first few days.

The full extent of a dreadful sort of emptiness begins to be really felt.

So I like to try and call on such folk in the days and weeks beyond the day of the thanksgiving service we've held. I was round seeing such a person today.

She was glad to talk. Glad, I guess, of the company, too, in a way.

Her sons all back to their work again and tied up with their own domestic and family concerns. Still feeling the pain of their grief, no doubt, but at least for them they've got their busy households and the constant running around of their family lives.

It is not good that we should be alone. The Lord knows that well - better than any, indeed.

It's striking the way the Bible narrates the way he comes to folk like that. Alone. Marginalised. Ostracised.

Jesus is classic when it comes to that sort of thing. He always seems to have his eyes wide open to the needs of folk like that. All sorts of different people. All sorts of different aloneness.

And, boom, he's there. Having a chat. Sharing a meal. Spending the time of day.

I was thinking of the way the Lord sent the guy Elijah (I mean, this was a long, long time before Jesus even) way up north and totally out of the country to be with a lonely widow.

It was like the Lord simply said to him, 'Just be there.' That's all he was really asked to do. Just be there.

And a lot of the time it feels like that for me. Just being there. With people and for people.

And then seeing what remarkable things the Lord himself does.

It's hardly demanding - and certainly never dull! - being a follower of Christ.