When we consider the dark, regrettable nature of these specific emotions, it surprises me, and I hope you too, that they are even applied to God in the Bible. The verse I had in mind while wording the first paragraph was Genesis 6:6. There we read that God was both grieved and his heart was filled with pain. It is God's relentless contemplation of the rebellion of His own creatures that is causing the grief and pain. He is staring at death. (Ephesians 2:1) If you have faced the death of someone you dearly loved, you know this grief and pain. This is what death brings—a surge of outrage against death.

Even more than the wasted lives of human beings who die physically, is the unspeakable tragedy of the never-ending torture of spiritual death. This brings grief and pain to the heart of God, and if only we could see beyond physical death with such clarity. (Ezekiel 18:30-32) But there is something specific about the grief and pain of God that I would like to draw out in this short blog. The Bible never suggests that while in that agony, God regrets creating the world and the human race in such a way that if He had the chance to do it over again, He would do it differently. God fully comprehended, before He created, every moment of man's rebellion, yet He still went ahead and created. That astounds me. Then, in Genesis 6:6, as God endures the actual moments of man's rebellion, He experiences that distress, yet even in this distress, He knows that this was His clear intention. He is still thinking clearly about two facets at the same time; His joyful intentions in creation, and also the pain He must endure to achieve that intention.

I raise the issue of God's ability to feel pain, and also to think clearly, at the same time, because it relates to the way we relate to people who are grieving. With disappointing frequency I have witnessed and experienced the misunderstanding of people who desire to comfort the grieving. They assume that because the grieving person is exhibiting all of the signs of grief as described in the first paragraph of this blog, that the person has failed to retain his/her ability to think or reason clearly. It is wrong to assume this of God, and it is wrong to assume this of a person who has always been a clear-thinking Christian.

Possibly the most moving evidence of both pain and clear thought in God, is seen in Christ in Gethsemane and later Calvary. There the great Son of God slumps in agony, overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death (Matthew 26:38 and Mark 14:34). Yet running consistently alongside that great heartache is the lucid mind of God, purchasing the souls of men for God—enduring any pain in order to celebrate that astonishing achievement. This is so personal. Christ was willing to endure the grief and pain that I have endured in the face of death, in order to live as me, and to die as me, in order to purchase me for God. He was willing to push through the blurring torment because he clung to unblurred thought about God's agenda.

Wonderfully, this is the joy of the child of God in grief. When clear theological thought becomes fuzzy, the pain becomes a dreadful stagnant pool of death, rather than a necessary experience on the journey to effervescent eternal life.

In February 2013, I preached some of these thoughts while still very much in a state of grief. Listen to the message here.