7th November 2024

What do you say to someone who has lost a loved one? Often, I am lost for words, and sometimes there are no words that are adequate in this situation. We can’t resolve the grief a person is feeling, and grieving is a natural process when death occurs. But there is one very important thing we can promise the grieving person and that is to commit to pray for them to the one who ‘heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds’.

Over the years I’ve often heard it said ‘the only thing I can do is pray for you’ as if it were a last resort that suggests I can’t be of any practical help, but I will pray for you. But let me suggest that rather than viewing prayer as a last resort, we treat it as our first priority, and that we resolve to do it. Prayer isn’t the least we can do, it is the best we can do, because our prayer-answering God is the only one that can provide the soothing balm that is required, and he wants us to work with him in that process through our prayers.

How can we pray in a practical way for someone who is grieving? Here are a few suggestions:

Be a person who notices – Listen to what is on the person’s heart and be aware of their particular hurts, concerns, and issues. Ask God to make you aware of their needs and struggles and then cover the person in prayer. 

Be a person who is in it for the long haul – We often pray for someone immediately after they have been bereaved and then gradually, over time, our prayers for them become less frequent. Not because we don’t care, but life is busy. Yet the grieving process may take a long time to work through, and it would be so helpful to the person to know we are there with them holding them up in prayer.  

Be a person who prays on the key milestone dates – Birthdays, anniversaries, the date of the diagnosis and death will be especially tender and difficult to deal with. Letting the person know you are thinking of them and praying for them at those times will be a great source of encouragement.

We might not immediately see the difference our prayers make: we may have to wait until we are with the Lord for that. But prayer changes things, including us, as we grow in love, compassion and empathy, as well as in our trust of our gracious God.

Local congregation:
Grace Communion West Hampstead 
Sidings Community Centre
150 Brassey Road
West Hampstead
London
NW6 2BA

Meeting time:
Sunday 12.30 pm

Local congregational contact:
Gordon Brown
gordon.brown@gracecom.church

Word of Life contact:
wordoflife@gracecom.church