With everything happening in the world right now, I’ve been thinking of these words of Genesis 6: The Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved. The first time grief is ever mentioned in the Bible, God is the one who is doing it. Only six chapters into the story, when God looks on the world he has made, it breaks his heart. Thorns and thistles, disease and death, hate and injustice have already polluted the world he created. There is so much to mourn.
What does it look like for God to grieve? Today’s poem creatively explores this question.
God’s Grief
Great parent
who must have started out
with such high hopes.
What magnitude of suffering,
the immensity of guilt,
the staggering despair.
A mind the size of the sun,
burning with longing,
a heart huge as a gray whale
breaching, streaming
seawater against the pale sky.
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