All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. No, he said, I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave. So his father wept for him. The refusal to be comforted is the refusal of the grief that knows nothing can substitute for the person lost. The application: there is a grief that cannot be comforted by the comfort available, and the refusal of inadequate comfort is not faithlessness but the honest acknowledgment of what has been taken.

COMMUNITY REFLECTIONS

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