This week I stood outside a hospital room with a parent who had just heard words no parent ever wants to hear: your child might have cancer.
At one point she looked at me and said, “My whole life just changed.”
There really wasn't anything to say to that. Because she was right.
There are moments when life seems to divide into a before and an after. You walk into a room with one understanding of your life and walk out carrying something you never imagined carrying. The calendar fills with appointments. Words you barely knew become part of your everyday vocabulary. Questions pile up faster than answers can come.
I have been back to that hospital several times since then, and their medical journey is only beginning. I wish I could make it easier. I wish I could answer the questions. I wish I could take some of the fear away. But I can't. And maybe one of the hardest lessons we learn when walking alongside people who are suffering is that we are not always called to fix what hurts. Sometimes we are called simply to enter into it with them.
Paul writes in Romans 12:15: “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.”
That verse is remarkably simple. Paul doesn't tell us to explain why they are weeping, find the lesson hidden in their suffering, or quickly move them toward the bright side. He says to weep with them. There is something deeply Christian about refusing to leave someone alone in their pain.
When someone we love is hurting, we often feel pressure to say something profound. Silence makes us uncomfortable. We want a verse, an explanation, or a sentence that somehow makes everything feel less terrible. And while Scripture absolutely gives us truths to speak in suffering that remind one another of God's character and promises, we can sometimes use true words at the wrong time because we are uncomfortable with another person's grief.
Job's friends are an interesting example. We remember them mostly for the terrible things they eventually said. But before they tried to explain Job's suffering, they did something beautiful. Job 2 tells us that when they saw him, they wept. They tore their robes, sat on the ground beside him, and for seven days and seven nights, “no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.”
Before their theology became speeches, their friendship looked like presence. They sat down in the ashes. There are moments when that is exactly what love requires. Not answers. Not explanations. Presence.
It may look like sitting in a hospital waiting room. Bringing dinner. Picking up someone's kids. Sending a text that doesn't require a response. Remembering an appointment weeks after everyone else's lives have returned to normal. Sometimes love looks remarkably ordinary.
But ordinary faithfulness can carry enormous weight when someone's world has fallen apart.
This is also what we see in Jesus.
One of my favorite pictures of Christ's compassion comes in John 11. Lazarus has died. When Jesus arrives, Martha and Mary are grieving. Jesus knows something they do not: in a matter of moments, He is going to call Lazarus out of the tomb. Jesus knows resurrection is coming. And yet when He sees Mary weeping, Jesus does not say, “Don't cry. You don't understand what I'm about to do.” He weeps.
“Jesus wept.”
The shortest verse in our English Bibles gives us an enormous picture of our Savior. Jesus is not detached from human suffering. He does not stand at a safe distance from our grief. The Son of God entered our broken world, experienced sorrow, and stood beside people whose hearts were breaking. And ultimately, He entered suffering more deeply than we ever could. At the cross, Christ bore sin and its judgment so that suffering and death would not have the final word for those who belong to Him.
That means Christian presence is more than simply being a nice person during someone's crisis. When we move toward hurting people, we are reflecting something of our Savior—the One who moved toward us.
When tragedy first happens, people often surround the family. There are messages, meals, prayers, visits, and offers to help.
But some suffering lasts a long time. The diagnosis happens in a moment. The treatment can take months or years. The funeral happens on one day. Grief does not. The crisis may be new to us, but eventually it becomes part of someone else's everyday life. And that is where the church has an opportunity to love differently.
Galatians 6:2 tells us: “Bear one another's burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ.”
Bearing a burden implies weight. It costs something. We don't merely acknowledge that someone is carrying something heavy; we put our shoulder underneath part of the load.
We cannot carry every part of another person's suffering, but we can make sure they don't carry it alone. We can keep showing up. We can remember. We can pray specifically. We can listen without rushing to speak.
We can offer practical help instead of the vague, “Let me know if you need anything.”
We can give people permission to be sad, exhausted, confused, or afraid without feeling like they have to clean themselves up before being around us. And we can gently keep pointing one another toward Jesus—not with shallow answers, but with the steady confidence that even here, He has not left us.
I don't know everything the coming months will hold for this family. I wish I did. But I know what I want to do. I want to stay.
I want to remember that what may eventually become old news to everyone else is still their everyday reality. I want to pray when there are updates and when there aren't. I want to celebrate good news without pretending the hard parts aren't hard.
And I think that is a calling for all of us. Someone around you is carrying something heavy right now. Maybe their whole life changed with a phone call, a diagnosis, a death, a broken relationship, or a lost job.
You may not know what to say. That's okay. You don't have to have the perfect words to love someone well.
So, this week, think of someone who is walking through a difficult season and do something intentional. Send the text. Make the meal. Write down the date of their next appointment and follow up. Sit with them. Pray with them. Ask a question and actually listen to the answer.
And if there is nothing you can do to make their situation better, don't underestimate the ministry of simply being there because sometimes one of the most Christlike things we can offer a hurting person is not an answer to their suffering.
It is a faithful reminder, through our presence: You do not have to walk through this alone.