GOING
PUBLIC WITH PAIN

Topics: Circumstances and Faith; Comfort; Compassion; Death; Despair; Emotions; Faith; Funerals; Grace; Grief; Ministry; Mortality; Mourning; Murder; Overcoming

References: Psalm 23:4; 46:1–3; 121; Isaiah 41:10–13; 43:1–2; John 14:27; 2 Corinthians 1:3–4; 1 Thessalonians 5:11; 1 Peter 5:7

The day Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated (April 4, 1968), Robert F. Kennedy was in Indianapolis, speaking to a crowd of African-Americans. He had to break the terrible news to the large crowd that had gathered.

He sought to comfort his hearers by sharing his grief over the assassination of his brother, John F. Kennedy—something he had never before done publicly. In the midst of that sharing, he quoted Aeschylus, his favorite Greek poet: “Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.”

—Joe Klein, “Psst, Who’s Behind the Decline of Politics?” Time (April 17, 2006)