Grief, Hunger, and the God Who Draws Near by Pastor Jason Schott
The Lord is near to the brokenhearted
and saves the crushed in spirit. (Psalm 34:18, ESV)
A dear friend is staying with us for a few days. She has been a widow for six years. We talk about her late husband — our dear friend too — and there is an aching in my belly as we do. It is the ache of missing someone. It is real and physical, and it sits low, persistent, and quiet.
As I sat with that feeling, my mind wandered toward our annual 21 days of prayer and fasting. I found myself noticing something: the ache of grief and the ache of an empty stomach are not the same thing at all, and yet they rhyme with one another in ways that feel worth exploring.
When The Belly Aches
When I have skipped a meal, my body lets me know. There is a hollow urgency. I can become irritable, foggy, low on energy. These are real physical signals — my body doing exactly what it was designed to do, crying out for the nourishment it knows it needs. But I have never wailed in agony over a skipped meal. I have never despaired. The suffering is real, but it is manageable. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know the meal is coming.
Grief is something different altogether. And yet — what is grief, if not the body’s cry for something it deeply needs? We are made for companionship, for security, for the nourishment that comes from being truly known and loved by another person. When that person is taken from us, the body does not simply inconvenience itself. It wails. It does not know when — or whether — those needs will ever be met again.
In that sense, grief and hunger are related. Both are the cry for something tangible we are not currently receiving.
Where God Shows Up
Here is what I have witnessed in healthy grief, and what I have experienced in fasting: in both, God shows up.
Those who walk through grief with their hearts open — who do not numb or deny or distract — often speak of an unexpected nearness of God. A Presence that meets them in
the hollow place. The Psalms are full of this. “The LORD is close to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18). Not distant. Not waiting for the sorrow to pass. Close.
And so it is with fasting. In the wanting, in the ache of an empty belly, something shifts. Our need becomes visible to us in a way it is not when we are comfortable and full. And in that visibility, we find ourselves reaching — not for the refrigerator, but for God. The ache becomes a doorway.
The Meal Is Still Coming
But here is where fasting and grief part ways, and the difference matters enormously. When we fast, there is a meal forthcoming. It may not arrive on our body’s preferred schedule, but the food is coming. We know this. The fast is voluntary, bounded, purposeful — and it ends.
In grief, it can feel as though there is no solution coming. The widow does not know when, or whether, her loneliness will lift. The one who mourns cannot see past the loss to any future fullness. The meal — if there is one — is hidden from view. Her satisfaction of needs has to this point been embodied in her spouse — who has been ripped away.
This is why we must hold fasting and grief together gently, without collapsing them into one another. Fasting is a discipline we normally enter with the expectation of a positive ending. Grief is something that happens to us, and its resolution is not within our power to schedule.
And yet in both, God is near. The ache is a teacher. Let it carry you to the one who satisfies every longing — and in these 21 days, let it make your heart grow fonder and tender to those suffering in ways both similar and vastly different.
Depend on the Spirit
Ask the Holy Spirit to help you see the deeper longings, desires or motives in your heart that these thoughts are pointing to. (For example: you may write down, “Help me see what You want me to see in the midst of the ache. In this season of fasting and prayer, I long to know you more deeply – even during the most intense of aches.”) The Lord can help us discern the path forward – through His word, His Spirit, His people.