Sitting in It With Him

Paul gives a short instruction that is easy to read past. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. It is a call to enter another man's actual condition rather than standing outside it with advice. For men fighting this fight, the weeping half matters enormously. When a brother finally admits he fell, the temptation for everyone else is to fix him fast, to hand him a verse or a strategy so the discomfort ends quickly.

Paul asks for something harder and kinder, that we sit down in the grief with him and let it be grief for a while before we rush to repair. A man who has just confessed a relapse does not first need a plan. He needs to know he is not alone in the wreckage, that someone will feel the weight of it beside him without flinching. And the other half is just as real, that when a brother marks thirty clear days, you celebrate it like it is your own, because in a true pack it is.

Learn to weep with your men and to rejoice with them. Ask God to give you a heart soft enough to do both, and brothers who will do the same for you.