When you're in real pain, you want it gone. One of our community, Ellis, said it perfectly this week — "What I struggle with is not wanting God to be with me in the pain. I just want him to take it away." If God can fix it, why doesn't he? It's an honest question, and most of us have asked some version of it.

This week Mike Harris took us to the story of Jesus raising his friend Lazarus from the dead. Mike admitted it was a hard talk to prepare, partly because grief is a hard thing to talk about. But what he found in the story isn't a tidy answer. It's something better, and it starts with God doing something really unusual.

God Was in No Rush

Jesus hears that Lazarus is seriously ill. Bear in mind that He and Lazarus are good friends and that He loves this family — Lazarus and his two sisters, Mary and Martha. And what does he do? He waits. Two days. He doesn't drop everything and sprint to Bethany to save the day.

That used to really annoy our co-host Jan. "I'd have been Martha on the warpath," she said. And honestly, who wouldn't be? We've got this picture of Jesus as Superman, cape on, here to save the day. Instead, he pauses. He lets the people he loves sit in their grief for a while before he ever shows up.

Then, when he finally arrives and sees everyone weeping, the story says something startling. "A deep anger welled up within him, and he was deeply troubled." (John 11:33, NLT). And a couple of verses later, three of the simplest words in the whole Bible — "Then Jesus wept."

No explanation. No speech. God, standing at the edge of human grief, crying.

What Jesus Was Actually Angry About

Jesus wasn't angry at the people, or at the situation getting messy. He was angry at death itself.

Think back to the very beginning. When God made the world, death wasn't part of the plan. People were meant to live with God, in a place with no pain and no goodbyes. Death is the intruder. It was never how things were supposed to be. So when Jesus stands there looking at the wreckage death has caused in a family he loves, his anger is the right response. Death is wrong, and he knows it.

That changes how we see our own sadness. Mike put it like this — your grief is a natural reflection of something in the heart of God. When someone dies, it is sad. It's sad because we miss them. It's sad because it was never meant to be this way. So if you're grieving, you're not being weak or faithless. You're feeling exactly what God feels about death.

We're Not Great at Sadness

If grief is this normal, why are we so awkward around it? Mike wondered if it was to do with toxic positivity. "Good vibes only." The sense that sadness is somehow inconvenient.

Part of it is pace. Everything in life has sped up, and sadness slows you down. When you're grieving, you're slower than usual, and that bumps up against a culture that wants everyone to keep moving. Sadness also forces the people around us to feel something, and that can be costly. It's easier to look away.

Mike spoke really openly about losing his own dad over a decade ago, while he was working as a teacher. He remembered the phone call from his mum, the rush to the hospital, and how fast-paced school life left no room to grieve. What he wanted was simple. He wanted someone to ask. To sit with him. To let him tell a story about his dad.

He also described how grief ambushes you. He felt almost nothing when he first saw his dad's body. But years later, walking round Tesco with his son, he spotted something his dad had liked — and it hit as though his dad had died that very day. There's no neat timeline. As Jan reminded us, you can smell something ten years on and be right back there. No one gets to tell you how long you're allowed to grieve.

Faith in God's Character, Not the Outcome

So where does faith fit when God doesn't fix the thing you're begging him to fix?

Faith has to be in the character of God, not in the outcome. -- Mike Harris

That's the difference between faith that survives suffering and faith that shatters on it. If our trust depends on God giving us the result we want, every unanswered prayer becomes evidence against him. But if our trust is in who God is — loving, gracious, near to the brokenhearted — then we can sit with a story like Lazarus, full of things we don't understand, and not be destroyed by it.

Remember that Lazarus walked out of that tomb alive. And then, later, he died again. The raising wasn't a permanent fix. As Matt pointed out, it was a signpost — a glimpse of the bigger hope, that one day everyone who trusts Jesus will come out of the grave for good. The miracle wasn't God removing death forever. It was God promising he will.

How to Actually Help Someone Grieving

This is where the talk got really practical, and it's the part you can use this week.

The mourners in John 11 walked two miles from Jerusalem to be with Mary and Martha. No quick car ride. They got up and physically positioned themselves next to grieving people. That's the model — presence over a polished response.

Here's what came out of the conversation about how to show up well:

• Don't say "let me know if you need anything." Matt was straight about this one. It feels kind, but it hands the whole burden back to the person who's already overwhelmed. Be proactive instead. Say "I'm coming round on Tuesday," or "let's go for a walk," or just turn up with a pie.
• Ask them to tell you a story. Mike said this was the single most healing thing. When someone has died, the memories are often all that's left. Asking "tell me a story about them" helps unlock those memories instead of locking them away.
• Listen, then ask a question. Not "oh, I've got a similar story." Get engrossed in their story, then ask something about it. When people feel genuinely heard, Mike said, it's transformational.
• Don't be scared of the emotion. Jan, who spent years as a midwife visiting grieving mums, said they never wanted answers or platitudes. They just wanted someone to be there. The worst that happens is someone cries or gets angry in front of you — and that's okay.
• Take the risk. Sacrificial love costs something and might get it slightly wrong. Mike told us about a stranger at a party who saw a woman breaking down over a divorce and simply held her and told her how brilliantly she was doing. It could have gone wrong. It didn't. It was exactly what she needed.

Matt shared his own version of this. Years ago, with the senior pastor away, he drove to the women's hospital late one night after a couple lost a baby to miscarriage. He didn't go to say the perfect thing. He told them, "you don't need to talk to me, I'm just going to be outside praying." He went so they'd know someone cared enough to come.

Conversation Street

Has anyone ever said something to comfort you that actually made things worse?

Plenty. The classic is "let me know if you need anything," which sounds caring but quietly passes the work back to the grieving person. Sharon named the fear underneath it — people stay silent because they've heard stories of someone saying the wrong thing. The takeaway wasn't "say the perfect thing." It was "show up anyway, and just ask."

Why do you think we're so uncomfortable with sadness?

Because sadness slows us down in a culture obsessed with speed, and because it forces us to feel things we'd rather avoid. Jan added a sharp observation — often we're more worried about looking foolish or saying the wrong thing than we are focused on the grieving person. We make their pain about our discomfort. Other cultures, she noted, give grief far more room and time than we tend to in Britain.

What does this story tell us about how God views our pain?

That he takes it seriously enough to enter it. Alicia reflected that seeing Jesus go through real human emotions helps us embrace our own. Mike shared something he'd been reading — God doesn't just know sadness in general, he knows what you're going through from your point of view. He identifies with your specific pain, your specific history. That's a comforting thing to sit with.

Is there grief in your life you've never given yourself permission to feel?

Mike was honest that he tended to push his own grief away and stay alone, partly because of the pace of work. What he could have done, he said, was take his sadness to God more often. Both Mary and Martha brought their grief straight to Jesus — one with anger, one with quiet disappointment — and he met each of them exactly where they were. Whatever your grief, God is big enough and loving enough to handle it.

Can you think of a better title for John 11 than "The Raising of Lazarus"?

Mike's gentle challenge. The chapter is less about the miracle and more about how Jesus relates to people who are hurting. If you've got a better title, we'd love to hear it.

You Don't Have to Fix It

If you take one thing from this week, let it be this. If you're walking alongside someone who's grieving, you don't have to fix their problem. You don't have to find the magic words. You just have to show up and be with them.

And if you're the one grieving — please hear this. You are not a problem to be fixed. Your sadness isn't a flaw in your faith. Sit with it. Sit with God in it. Let him take you on the journey you might need to go on.

Read Lamentations. It's a whole book of the Bible given over to lament, which tells you something. There's room in faith for honest sorrow.

Is there a grief you've been rushing past — or someone near you who just needs you to sit down and say, "tell me a story"?

If anything here stirred something, we'd genuinely love to hear from you. You can reach us through this site— whether you'd like prayer, want to talk, or just want to say hello. None of us were meant to grieve alone.