So, you’ve found yourself in a place marked by loss.
Maybe you’ve lost someone you love. Through death, distance, betrayal, or the end of a relationship, their absence has left wounds that ache in ways words can’t really touch.
Maybe you’ve lost a job, and with that, the loss of security, stability, or a part of your identity.
Sometimes loss isn’t even tangible—like losing the sense of who you used to be. An illness that changes your body and suddenly life changes and you no longer recognize yourself.
Sometimes loss is dreams that never came to be. Expectations that fell apart.
And sometimes, the losses stack on top of each other until it feels like you’ve lost everything.
Loss can follow you through your days like a lazy river, an undercurrent of grief, always present beneath the surface that slowly shapes how you live.
The truth is that loss is one of the great equalizers of being human.
Every person, in some way, will encounter loss and grief. We are constantly navigating endings, disappointments, changes, and absences. And this shared experience is part of what connects humanity.
This is also why the story of Jesus matters so deeply to those who have lost deeply and grieving.
Jesus was well acquainted with sorrow and loss. Isaiah 53:3 describes Him as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.”, which tells us we’re not alone in our suffering. God did not remain distant from human pain. He entered it.
Jesus knew what it was like to lose people. He knew rejection, betrayal, abandonment, and sorrow. In many ways, we could say Jesus experienced the loss of everything. And the examples he left us show us how to move through our own grief with honesty and faithfulness.
It says in John 11:35 that “Jesus wept.”
Standing before the tomb of his friend Lazarus and witnessing the grief of his friends, he wept. He did not silence grief with spiritual bypassing comments. He allowed himself to feel deeply.
That matters for us.
Because sometimes we think healing means pretending we’re okay. Sometimes we think faith means suppressing our sadness, but Jesus shows us another way. He shows us that tears are not weakness. Grief is not failure. Mourning is not a lack of faith.
Jesus also lamented.
On the cross, Jesus cried out the words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” These are the words of someone expressing deep anguish, abandonment, and sorrow. Though God’s promise is to never leave us, Jesus still voiced what his suffering felt like in that moment.
That is the language of lament.
Lament is honest speech before God. It is bringing our confusion, disappointment, sadness and even anger into the presence of God without pretending. Lament does not hide pain; it tells the truth about it.
Even Jesus’ final recorded words are spoken through lament. In Luke 23:46 He says, “Into your hands I commend my spirit,” drawing from Psalm 31, a Psalm of lament. Even in his dying moments, Jesus was borrowing from words of lament. This gives us permission to do the same.
When we feel like we’ve lost everything, we do not have to rush ourselves out of sorrow. We do not have to spiritually bypass our pain. There is no amount of forced gratitude, or polished faith that can erase real grief.
Instead, we can move through loss the way Jesus did: honestly. We acknowledge what hurts. We lament. We weep. We tell the truth about what has been taken from us.
But it’s also important to note: Jesus’s grief was not the end of His story.
Jesus lamented, and He remained faithful.
Jesus wept, and He continued forward.
Jesus carried sorrow, and He still carried purpose.
It seems that grieving did not weaken his faithfulness, it made room for it.
Maybe there is an invitation in here for us, too.
Maybe managing loss is not about avoiding grief but allowing ourselves to move through it with Jesus. Maybe loss is not proof that Jesus has abandoned us, but evidence of a world that isn’t how it fully should be right now and a reminder that we humans carry love, hope, and heartbreak all at once.
And maybe, in the middle of losing everything, we discover that Jesus today is still near to the brokenhearted, still acquainted with grief, still present in sorrow, and still holding us gently through the long journey of becoming whole again.