There is a quiet grief many people are carrying right now.

News breaks, images circulate, names and stories appear before we’ve had time to catch our breath. Even when tragedy does not touch us directly, our nervous systems and spirits still register the impact. But it doesn’t always come with a clear name or a single event. It lives in the background of daily life—it’s the heaviness we feel scrolling the news, in conversations about war and injustice, in the ache of witnessing suffering that feels endless and unresolved. This is not just personal grief. It is grief for the world. 

And it can feel confusing to carry.

We often get the message—directly or indirectly—that we have to choose between pain and hope. If we feel the pain too deeply, we are pessimistic or negative. If we speak about hope, we feel like we’re minimizing suffering or being a “Pollyanna”. But this kind of thinking asks us to split ourselves in two.

Healing does not require that kind of division.

One of the most important shifts we can make is understanding that pain and hope are not opposing forces. They can—and often do—exist at the same time.

Pain is a natural response to loss, threat, and injustice. It signals that something matters. Hope, when it’s honest, is not denial or toxic positivity. It is the belief that meaning, connection, and transformation are still possible—even in the presence of suffering.

When we try to eliminate pain in order to feel hopeful, we often become numb or disconnected. When we abandon hope in order to honor pain, we risk becoming overwhelmed or immobilized.

Holding both allows us to remain fully human in a broken world.

Scripture offers us a different framework—one that does not ask us to carry everything alone:

“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matthew 11:28–30)

This passage is often misunderstood as a call to do more or try harder, but it is actually an invitation to share the weight. A yoke was designed for two—meaning the burden was never meant to be carried alone.

In the midst of global grief and personal exhaustion, this matters. We are not asked to ignore the pain of the world. We are invited to bring it with us—to place it alongside a presence that is gentle, humble, and sustaining.

Rest, in this sense, is not withdrawal from reality. It is restoration within it.

What many people are experiencing today is sometimes called collective grief or global grief. It comes from witnessing ongoing harm without clear resolution—wars that continue, systems that fail, political turmoil, communities suffering with little relief.

This kind of grief is disorienting because it often lacks ritual, acknowledgment, or closure. There is no single moment to point to and say, This is where the grief began.

If you feel heavy, anxious, or helpless in response to what’s happening in the world, it does not mean you are weak or broken. It may mean you are deeply empathetic and paying attention.

Empathy allows us to say: This hurts, and it makes sense that it does. It helps us move away from shame and self-judgment and toward understanding. Instead of asking, “What’s wrong with me for feeling this way?” we begin to ask, “What is being revealed about what matters?”

When we listen to one another’s stories, bear witness to pain without rushing to fix it, and acknowledge shared humanity, healing can become communal rather than isolating.

Empathy reminds us that we were never meant to carry this alone.

You were not meant to do this alone.