Grief That Has Already Been Carried

March 18, 2025 · Trainsong by Josh Garrels · Isaiah 53:4-5

Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

Isaiah 53:4-5

Isaiah 53 uses the language of physical labor: borne, carried, wounded, bruised. The suffering described here is not abstract. It is described in the vocabulary of things that happen to a body. The prophet is trying to make sure you do not intellectualize it into something safe.

The detail that catches me is "our griefs" and "our sorrows." Not our failures only, though those are present. Our griefs. The things that have happened to us, that we did not choose, that have left their mark. The text insists that those too were taken up and carried.

Josh Garrels' "Trainsong" moves through a landscape of shame and hardship toward something like release. It is not a triumphalist song. It does not pretend the difficulty did not happen. But it locates those difficulties within a story that has a different ending than the pain would suggest.

The train is an old image in American folk and gospel: forward motion, a journey, often away from something and toward something else. Garrels uses it honestly. There is weariness in the song. There is also the sense of being accompanied.

Isaiah 53:4 says "we esteemed him stricken, smitten of God." The surrounding culture looked at the suffering servant and drew the obvious conclusion: God is punishing him. They were wrong in the most consequential way possible. The suffering was not punishment but substitution. What looked like abandonment was in fact the mechanics of rescue.

Matthew 28:20 is where Jesus promises to be present always, and Garrels' song reaches for that assurance. The journey in "Trainsong" is not traveled alone. The Lord who bore the grief is also the one who travels alongside.

What Isaiah 53 and a song like "Trainsong" share is a refusal to disconnect suffering from meaning. That is not the same as saying suffering is good or that it should be welcomed. It is saying that within the Christian story, grief has been taken seriously at the highest possible level, and that changes what you do with it.