Our road trip the next couple of days, is in a small farm in Iowa. This morning, we woke up to roosters crowing. These are  “junior roosters”—cockerels. They are separate from the rest of the chickens so the owner can study which of them will produce the best qualities for her flock of chickens. They all were practicing their good morning crows.

Did you know the comb on a chicken is for a purpose? Of course you knew God had some plan for each animal. Their physical attributes are for a purpose. In this case, the combs are heat control! Chickens do not sweat so the combs help regulate their body temperature! I could go into more detail, but this gives you a picture of the intricacies of God’s creation.

God provides care for each one of us, too, including our grief. Sometimes our grief is because we have lost a person we love very much in death. You might be waiting for someone to die.

But there are other kinds of grief. There could be grief in something going on in a child’s life—your child. It might be a child still living at home, it might be a child who is no longer under your roof.  They might be making choices we wish they would not. Perhaps there is a health need in their body and you are troubled and even scared. There might be conflict in your family. Different family members don’t agree with what we believe. Might your grief be the clamor of this world and the news we are bombarded with second by second?

I love it that Jesus knows our troubles and the troubles of this world, too.

God gives wisdom even to people who don’t claim to know Him. Oscar Wilde was one. In his De Profundis, written as I understand in prison. It’s his comment that rang true for me:

…Prosperity, pleasure and success, may be rough of grain and common in fiber, but sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things (my emphasis).

One either knows of sorrow and this statement will ring true for them. Or they don’t know sorrow. Might they be ignoring it? Wilde went on to say:

Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realize what that means. They will know nothing of life till they do.

How about that. If you have been gifted with sorrow, you understand life very well. You may not like your sorrow. I certainly didn’t. Or your sorrow may be different than loss of a loved one in death as I said earlier.

Just as the verse above, God is close to the broken-hearted, He will do that for you.

What does God know about being broken-hearted? You might ask. Jesus, who is God, does know! Isaiah the prophet reflected on Him here:

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:4-5).

I’ll let you think on that for a minute. He was pierced for us! He loves us!

Sometimes, through the sorrow God gives us things to smile about. It might be an innocent child—such as the dear grands we are visiting here in Iowa. It might be a chicken, so uniquely created. It might be a puppy, like our Rudy, seated here on patrol. Watching and waiting to see new things.

God gives us beauty in our day. I’m partial to sunrises and sunsets. Here’s one for you to enjoy.

Is it a sunrise, or sunset? I don’t think it matters (it’s a sunset in Oregon).

Whether your grief is loss of a loved one, or loss of something you really wanted to happen, God is near you. And perhaps, he might give you opportunity to smile too.