Paul tells the Philippians to rejoice - right before he tells them to let their reasonableness be known, right before he says 'the Lord is near.' This is not toxic positivity. He's not saying ignore your problems. He's anchoring rejoicing in proximity to the Lord.
I'm a funeral home director, so I'm around grief all day. The families I work with, the ones who actually do okay, aren't the ones who pretend everything is fine. They're the ones who can feel their loss completely and still somehow know they're not abandoned in it. They're grieving and they're sustained.
I've started using this verse differently in my work. I'm not telling people to rejoice about their loss - that would be obscene. But I'm suggesting that even in the grief, there's something they can still touch. The presence of God. The way their person changed them. The community holding them. It's not denying the sorrow. It's finding the joy that can exist alongside it.
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