My community is grieving, but I’m not reacting in the same way. Is something wrong with me?

Grief is one of the most deeply personal experiences a human being can have, and there is no single or right way to walk through it. Some people weep openly; others feel a strange numbness for weeks. Some need to talk constantly; others grow quiet. Some feel relief alongside sorrow, especially after a long illness. None of these responses means you loved less or that something has gone wrong inside you.

Scripture gives us room here. The shortest verse in the Bible — “Jesus wept” (John 11:35) — tells us that grief is real and that God in the flesh entered into it with us. But we also read that David’s response to the death of his child surprised everyone around him (2 Samuel 12:19-23). Grief in the Bible doesn’t come in one shape.

We also know that we do not grieve as those who have no hope (1 Thessalonians 4:13). That doesn’t mean we grieve less; it means our grief is held within the promise of resurrection. If your grief looks different from those around you, that’s not a sign of failure. It may simply be a sign of how uniquely God has made you.

The word “Trinity” isn’t in the Bible. So where does it come from?

The word “Trinity” doesn’t appear in Scripture, but the truth it describes certainly does. At the moment of Jesus’ Baptism, when the Son stands in the water, the Spirit descends like a dove, and the Father speaks from heaven (Matthew 3:16-17). The three persons of the Godhead are present together. Jesus commands His disciples to baptize “in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19).

The word “Trinity” was simply the church’s way of naming what Scripture already taught that we worship one God in three persons. The early church didn’t invent the doctrine; they gave it a label so they could defend and teach it clearly. Lutherans confess this faith every Sunday in the creeds, and we celebrate it in a particular way each year on Trinity Sunday.