From personal tragedies that leave deep scars to distant calamities that gnaw at the edges of the mind, grief takes many forms.

Grief exempts no one. There are endless reasons to mourn, so perhaps no one’s grief is exceptional. Yet every sorrow is uniquely felt.

Grief weighs heavily in the world today. Jesus’ wry remark that “sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” (Matthew 6:34, KJV) feels sadly relevant. So does Shakespeare’s line that sorrows come “not [as] single spies but in battalions.”

Scripture’s call to mourn with those who mourn encompasses all kinds of grief. The community of faith is the place to struggle together with our losses, wait upon the Lord and try to ease our neighbors’ pain.

This pain is more than a state of mind. As Psalm 39:1 says, sorrow takes an emotional toll but also exacts a spiritual and physical price: “Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also.”

Good caregivers bind the emotional, physical and spiritual wounds of grief. Healers of sorrow include Mennonite Disaster Service volunteers who know “there is more to a homeowner’s life than a house,” as MDS staffer Becky Gochnauer said during the 75th anniversary celebration of MDS in February. Jay Gilmore, a disaster-­recovery official from Selma, Ala., said MDS volunteers helped rebuild the town’s “social and spiritual bonds.”

Bonds that connect the body of Christ hold restorative power for those who grieve. Pakisa K. Tshimika of the Democratic Republic of Congo has felt this balm. Tshimika, who has served with Mennonite World Conference and Mennonite Brethren missions in Fresno, Calif., tells how caring friends helped him bear the pain of siblings’ deaths and his own physical disability.   

For Tshimika, the key to coping with sorrow is belonging — specifically, belonging to the family of faith. Having “felt the love of my Anabaptist Mennonite family around the globe,” he embraces the widest possible vision of belonging. This vision includes those who’ve passed beyond this world: “A cloud of witnesses — saints above and saints below — are my companions.”

While grateful for his many sources of hope, Tshimika expresses another kind of sorrow: grief for his country. Warfare in the DRC has claimed more than 6 million lives since 1996. Rape as a weapon of war multiplies the trauma. For Tshimika, his compatriots who grieve “are not just numbers. . . . They are members of our Mennonite churches. . . . Their grief is my grief.” And ours as well.

Americans, too, grieve for their country. Today many grieve the Trump administration’s stone-hearted actions: the shuttering of USAID’s life-saving programs overseas; immigration raids of workplaces and homes; indiscriminate firing of government workers; the shameful inversion of moral judgment on the war in Ukraine as President Trump praises the war criminal Vladimir Putin and denigrates Volodymyr Zelensky, the honorable leader of a suffering nation.

While grieving for those harmed by executive orders, we lament the nation’s leaders’ lack of compassion. Religion News Service cited a grim statistic: “At the end of February, the U.S. State Department announced the cancellation of some 10,000 programs that fed, sheltered and cared for people around the world, including the sick and children. The impact will be worldwide but especially harsh on refugees fleeing conflicts in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.”

InterAction, an alliance of international nongovernmental organizations, says: “Women and children will go hungry, food will rot in warehouses while families starve, children will be born with HIV — among other tragedies. This needless suffering will not make America safer, stronger or more prosperous. Rather, it will breed instability, migration and desperation.”

True evangelical faith comforts the sorrowful, Menno Simons said. As Menno’s heirs, will we join with other people of faith in refusing to turn away from those in need? We can do this in local acts of kindness and in national activism, as Mennonite Church USA has done by joining a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s decision to rescind limits on immigration raids in houses of worship.

Even amid grief, hope blooms in the spring, the season of new beginnings. The writer of Ecclesiastes, who seems acquainted with grief, observes that there is a season for everything, including a time to weep. As Easter approaches, we place our hope in the Resurrection and look toward the day when God will wipe away every tear (Revelation 21:3-4).