WE WILL HEAL UNDER THE ENORMOUS SKY

Beneath the sprawling cityscape, the fashion district gleamed like a dream caught between sunlight and shadow, its streets alive with fleeting moments. Mitchell Royel's lens captured the fabric of today, immortalizing whispers of silk, denim, and leather draped against the aching blue canvas of a Los Angeles afternoon. Each frame hummed with the rhythm of life—too fast to hold, too golden to forget. And as we wandered, we were tethered to the melody of "Regardless" by RAYE and Rudimental, its haunting beat weaving through alleys and reflections, matching the pulse of our steps. The photos are fragments of the ordinary turned sacred, threads of beauty stitched into the chaos, and all the while, the music echoed in our bones—a steady reminder that even in the endlessly fleeting, we remain here, alive, capturing.

Family, let us gather in close tonight. Let us press in together, because the Spirit of the Living God has a word for us — and it is a tender word. It is a word soaked in salt water and wrapped in holy grief. It is a word for every one of us who has laid our head down on a cold pillow and reached across the bed, across the room, across the years, for someone who is no longer there.

We know that ache, don't we?

We know what it is to hate waking up alone. We know what it is to open our eyes in the gray morning light and remember, all over again, that they are gone. And we know what it is to cry — not a polite cry, not a few tears brushed away quickly — but to sob from somewhere so deep that it frightens us. David knew that cry. He wrote in Psalm 6:6, "I am weary with my groaning; all the night I make my bed to swim; I water my couch with my tears." All the night. The whole bed wet with weeping. That is not weakness, beloved. That is the honest language of a heart that loved somebody.

And the Holy Spirit came to us in that hollow hour, in that empty space between the sheets, and whispered something we needed to hear.

So let us weep together tonight. And let us listen.

The Word of God tells us plainly in Ecclesiastes 3:1-4: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance."

This is the appointed time for our mourning. And God is not ashamed of our tears. He is not standing at a distance, tapping His foot, waiting for us to pull ourselves together. No — Psalm 34:18 says "The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit." He is close. He is right here. He draws near to the shattered places in us.

And we have been shattered, haven't we?

There are some of us in this room tonight who feel like the prophet Jeremiah when he cried out in Lamentations 3:17-18: "And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord." We looked at that empty chair. We looked at the unanswered text. We looked at the space where they used to stand, and we said the same thing — our hope is perished. It is over. What we had is gone.

But the Lord said to Jeremiah just a few verses later, in Lamentations 3:21-23: "This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. It is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness."

New every morning. Even the mornings we dread waking up to.

Now, beloved, this is where the Holy Spirit pressed something into our spirits that we did not expect. Because we came to God broken over someone who left — and instead of simply comforting us, He showed us something. He pulled back a veil, and He let us see the truth about those He has moved on to other places, other seasons, other fields.

The Lord is our shepherd. We know Psalm 23 well — "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters." But we forget, in our grief, that He is also their shepherd. The same God who is leading us is leading them. And sometimes — sometimes — the green pasture He has for them is not the same one He has for us.

That does not mean they did not love us.

It means God is a sovereign shepherd.

Isaiah 40:11 says: "He shall feed his flock like a shepherd: he shall gather the lambs with his arm, and carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young." He is gentle with the tender ones. He is gentle with them in their new place, just as He is gentle with us in our grief. He has not abandoned either of us. He has simply separated the flock for a season.

And the Holy Spirit whispered to us: they think of us.

Hear us now, because this is the part that makes us cry the hardest. This is the part that undoes us completely. Because the Spirit did not just tell us that they are fine and we should move on. He told us something more complicated than that. He told us that in those cold, still hours of the night — when the world goes quiet and there is nothing left to distract the heart — they remember us too.

Job 7:4 says "When I lie down, I say, When shall I arise, and the night be gone? and I am full of tossings to and fro unto the dawning of the day." That restless turning. That searching. We have done it. And the Holy Spirit revealed to us: so have they.

We are not alone in the 3 a.m. grief. We are not the only one staring at the ceiling, caught somewhere between prayer and memory. Beloved, Song of Solomon 3:1 cries out: "By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not." That is us. That has been us. Searching in the dark for what is no longer there.

And sometimes — the Spirit made clear — that is them too.

We want so badly for it to be clean. We want to believe that if they left, they left easily. That they do not feel what we feel. That we are the only ones crying into our hands at midnight. But Romans 12:15 commands even the strongest among us to "weep with them that weep." Grief does not belong exclusively to the one who was left. It belongs to everyone who loved.

And they loved us.

Beloved, the Holy Ghost will not let us have a simple story when God has given us a complicated one. Because the truth — the full, scripture-saturated truth — is that the heart is a deep and layered thing. Proverbs 20:5 says "Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out." There are things in the hearts of those who have been moved on that run deeper than their leaving. There are layers beneath the departure that we cannot fully see from where we stand.

Proverbs 14:10 tells us: "The heart knoweth his own bitterness; and a stranger doth not intermeddle with his joy." Only God and they know the full weight of what they carry. Only God knows what it cost them too. Only God understands the complexity of a love that is real and yet cannot remain — a love that is genuine and yet cannot survive the season it finds itself in.

We wept. Oh, how we wept. Our eyes were swollen. Our chests were hollow. We could not eat. We identified with the grief of Hannah in 1 Samuel 1:10 — "And she was in bitterness of soul, and prayed unto the Lord, and wept sore." Sore. Deeply. From a place that words could barely reach.

And yet even through that weeping, the Spirit was revealing to us something about them: that their emotions are not simple either. That they are not unmoved. That to be human, made in the image of God as Genesis 1:27 declares — "So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him" — is to carry within us the capacity for deep feeling that does not simply switch off because circumstances require it.

They feel it too.

It is just complicated.

Now, family, this is the holy ground. This is where the Spirit stood us still and asked us to do something extraordinary. He asked us to bless those who have moved on to greener pastures. Not because it is easy. Not because we are not hurting. But because the Word of God is absolutely clear on this matter.

Romans 12:14 says: "Bless them which persecute you: bless, and curse not." And how much more, then, should we bless those who did not persecute us but simply could not stay? Matthew 5:44 — the very words of Jesus — command us: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." If He requires that of us toward our enemies, then surely — surely — He is asking us to extend blessings toward those who simply loved us and left.

We want the best for them.

If we are honest — weeping, broken, sitting in our grief — we still want the best for them. And the Holy Spirit revealed: they want the best for us too. Jeremiah 29:11 says "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." God has an expected end for us. And somewhere in the tender places of their heart, they are hoping we find it.

That is love, even in separation. That is what the Apostle Paul meant in 1 Corinthians 13:7 when he wrote that love "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things." Even this. Even the distance. Even the silence. Even the cold side of the bed. Love endures.

We still hope for them. And by the grace of God — they still hope for us.

But then comes the part where the Spirit asked us to sit down, because this is the hardest truth of all.

It is just too complicated right now.

That phrase might not sound like scripture. But hear us — Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:12: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." We see in part. We know in part. We love in part. And sometimes the part that we can see is not enough to make the whole thing work — not in this season, not in this chapter, not in this particular green field the Lord has assigned to each of us.

Ecclesiastes 3:5 says there is "a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing." This is the time of refraining. And refraining does not mean the love was false. It does not mean God made a mistake. It does not mean we were wrong to love or wrong to weep. It simply means that the Great Shepherd — who sees the beginning from the end, who holds time itself in His hands as Revelation 1:8 declares, "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord" — has determined that this is not the season for togetherness.

And we must trust Him.

We cry. Lord knows, we cry. Psalm 56:8 tells us: "Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?" Every single tear we have cried over this person is in His bottle. He has counted them. He has recorded them. Not one tear has fallen without God seeing it, holding it, honouring it.

That is how much our grief matters to Him.

And so we come, finally, to the comfort. Because the Spirit of God — whom Jesus called the Comforter in John 14:26, "But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things" — does not leave us in our weeping without a word.

He reminds us of Isaiah 43:2: "When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee." We are in the waters of grief right now. Deep, cold waters. But they will not overflow us. God has made a promise and He does not break it. Numbers 23:19 says: "God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent." What He has promised, He will perform.

He reminds us of Psalm 30:5: "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." We are in the night. We are deep in the dark of it. We are still crying. But morning is coming. It is already assigned. It is already on its way. Joy is already moving toward us through the darkness, and it will arrive.

He reminds us of Psalm 147:3: "He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds." Our heart is broken. It is shattered. It is in pieces on the floor. But God is on His knees beside us, gathering every fragment. He is a healer of the specific kind of wound that no medicine and no person can touch — the wound of a love that had to let go.

And He reminds us of Romans 8:28 — that great, immovable pillar of the faith: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." All things. Even this. Even them leaving. Even the greener pastures. Even the cold nights. Even the tears that soaked our pillow. God is working it together. He is making something of this that we cannot yet see.

Go Well, Beloved.
Go Well.

So tonight, with tears still wet on our faces and the Word of God burning in our chests, we release them.

We release them to their greener pastures. We release them to the Shepherd who leads them. We release them, not because we do not love them, but because — like Abraham releasing Isaac to the altar in Genesis 22, trusting that God would provide — we trust that what God ordains is better than what we could orchestrate.

We say, as Ruth said to Naomi in that most beautiful expression of faithful love in Ruth 1:16-17: "Whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge." But unlike Ruth, we are not walking behind them. We are standing still. We are watching them go. And we are saying: go well. Be blessed. May the Lord cause His face to shine upon you, and be gracious unto you, as Numbers 6:25 promises.

May they be kept. May they be held. May the Lord bless them and keep them, as He blesses and keeps us — separately now, in our different fields, under the same enormous sky.

And may we, who remain, hold fast to Lamentations 3:25-26: "The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord."

We will wait.

We will cry, and we will pray, and we will wait.

And the God who put our tears in His bottle will not waste a single one.

In Jesus' name — let us weep, and let us be healed.

-Pastor Mitchell Royel