How to keep a morning devotional while you are grieving

Aim far lower than you would in any other season

Whatever you used to do in the morning, halve it, then halve it again. One verse. One sentence said out loud. Then stop. Grief takes an enormous amount of energy that does not show up on any list, and a devotional you cannot manage becomes one more failure in a week that has enough of them.

The psalm says God is near to people whose hearts are broken. Near is a small word and it is doing all the work — it is not a promise that the break will be fixed this morning, or that you will feel anything. It says where he is, not how you will feel about it.

So the aim is presence, not productivity. You showed up. That is the whole requirement.

• Read one verse, not a chapter. Read the same one all week if that is what you have
• Say one true sentence to God, even if the sentence is I cannot do this
• Sit for a minute afterwards without trying to make anything happen
• If you fall asleep, you were tired. That is not a failed devotional

The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.

Salmo 34:18, BSB

Say the true thing, even when it is ugly

There is a strong pull, especially in the first weeks, to pray the way you think a person of faith is supposed to pray — gratefully, hopefully, in complete sentences. Resist it. Whatever you are actually feeling is the only material you have to work with, and God is not going to be handed something better by you pretending.

Psalm 6 is a man describing being worn out from groaning, soaking his bed at night with weeping. Nobody edited that out. It sits in the middle of Israel's prayer book, which tells you something about what was considered prayable.

If you are angry, say you are angry. If you have nothing, say you have nothing. Grief that gets said out loud in the morning tends to take up slightly less room in the afternoon.

I am weary from groaning; all night I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears.

Salmo 6:6, BSB

Jesus cried at a grave he was about to open

This is the detail worth carrying into your mornings. At Lazarus's tomb, Jesus knew exactly what was about to happen and he wept anyway. The tears were not a failure of faith, or a lack of information about the ending. He knew the ending and cried at the grave.

Which means the thing people sometimes imply to you — that if you really believed, this would hurt less — is contradicted by the shortest verse in the Bible. Love costs what it costs. Faith does not discount the bill.

You are allowed to hold both: whatever hope you have, and the fact that you cannot see the person you want to see. Grief is not the opposite of faith. It is the shape love takes when the person is gone.

Jesus wept.

John 11:35, BSB

About mercies being new every morning

You will be sent this verse. It is a real and good line, and it is worth knowing where it sits. It is in the middle of Lamentations — a book of five poems written over a burned city and mass death — and the chapter around it includes some of the bleakest lines in Scripture. The poet is not cheerful. He is talking himself into one thing he still believes while the rubble is still warm.

That context makes it usable. It is not a promise that tomorrow will feel better, and it does not claim the loss was worth it or explain what it was for. It says the supply does not run out — that whatever it takes to get through today, there will be more of it tomorrow, and that you are not drawing down a finite account.

On a bad morning that is a low enough bar to actually stand on.

Because of the loving devotion of the LORD we are not consumed, for His mercies never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness!

Lamentations 3:22-23, BSB

There is a psalm that ends in the dark

Almost every psalm of complaint turns a corner somewhere near the end. Psalm 88 does not. It runs all the way through and stops with the writer saying that his companions have been taken from him and darkness is what is left. No resolution, no upswing, no lesson.

It matters that this was kept, and that it was kept as a prayer people were expected to use. Someone decided that a morning where nothing resolves still belongs in the book. If your devotional today ends where it started, you are in old company and you have not done it wrong.

Some mornings you will read, feel nothing, close the book and go to work. Do it again the next day. Not because it will pay off on a schedule, but because grief is long and you will want to have kept the door open.

You have removed my beloved and my friend; darkness is my closest companion.

Salmo 88:18, BSB

What this page cannot do

This is a devotional practice. It is not counselling, not medical or psychological advice, and not a replacement for real help from real people. Nothing here can tell you why this happened, and anyone who tells you they know God's purpose in your loss is speaking beyond what they can know.

Grief that will not let you eat, sleep, work or be with people after a long stretch, or that turns into constant numbness, is worth taking to a doctor or a grief counsellor. That is not a lesser road than prayer; for many people it is what makes prayer possible again. Bereavement support groups exist in most towns and most of them cost nothing.

If you are thinking about ending your life, contact your local emergency number or crisis line today, and tell one person near you tonight. Please do not wait for a morning when you feel better about calling.