Sadness To Joy

Life is hard.

Tragedy is unavoidable.

Grief is a result.

How can we find joy?

Jesus addresses this before the passion.

Let's look at what he said.

“I tell you the truth, you will weep and mourn over what is going to happen to me, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will suddenly turn to wonderful joy. It will be like a woman suffering the pains of labor. When her child is born, her anguish gives way to joy because she has brought a new baby into the world. So you have sorrow now, but I will see you again; then you will rejoice, and no one can rob you of that joy. At that time you won’t need to ask me for anything... 

Here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world.” Jesus, John 16:20-23, 33

Sorrow & Rejoicing.

So many powerful and deep insights from this short passage.

Jesus is telling his disciples of the difficulty they're about to experience but he also gives a bigger hope, of what's on the other side. The foundation of this hope is not whether the disciples remember or believe, but rather that what he tells them is true.

The disciples would lose sight of this hope until they experienced the resurrection on the other side of death. 

Through Jesus' sacrifice, he is modeling a way for us. Paul explores this in his letter to Rome.

“…give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him. Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect.”  Paul, the Apostle, Romans 12:1-2

We have the choice between changing into the ways of the world or the ways of Christ. In her book, The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge clarifies these dynamics at play with this transformation process.

“There is a power at work in redeemed human nature that is beyond human possibility. Conformity suggests being formed with, or by, this age of Sin and Death — being shaped by it and therfore lacking freedom… Paul’s word anakainosis… means being completely taken over. It means to become the righteousness of God… It really is quite true to say that the gospel tell us, “become what you already are.” pg 556-558

Become what we already are. Our sin has deformed us but God's antidote, through the cross, remakes us into the person we were always intended to be.

The disciples, and us as an extension, are told that we will face trials and tribulations, but that God has already won. There is already a victory, we simply must endure until that victory is embodied.

Paul says, “To die is to gain”… so how are we to reconcile that with the suffering we are facing now?

It’s because a layer of suffering is emotional and that makes this tough. We don’t escape (even with the knowledge of victory) suffering. Suffering bears real consequences that we must face.  

When Jesus heard of Lazarus’ dying he wept, even though he was going to bring him back to life.

The passage here illuminates that we know the ending of the story and that it’s true, inside of us now. 

I imagine us believers on an escalator towards “becoming that which we already are” but instead of simply allowing the escalator to take us up to the end, we walk or run down the moving stairs, away from its destination. 

Much like the Israelites looked back to Egypt and reminisced how it would have been better had they stayed in bondage, we too hold onto the past and want what was before when what's ahead is better. And again, we're reacquainted with grief. 

But God has something in mind for that 

Sorrow Transformed

Resilience.

I stumbled upon this insight about strong trees and how they're created.

“[T]hese trees wouldn’t completely mature. Before they could, they used to collapse. Later it was found that this was caused by the lack of wind in the biosphere. And it turns out, wind plays a major role in a trees life. The presence of wind makes a tree stronger, it is thus able to mature and not fall down due to its own weight.” - Anupum Pant 

The wind is a force upon the tree, and that force, ironically, helps strengthen it.

Trials and tribulations have the same effect on us, at least for those that embrace it.

To live and work on the heavenly plane is to voluntarily embrace challenges for an even greater benefit than those we get in this life.

“Easter Day was not just a bursting forth of a dead person from the tomb.

Easter Day was the overcoming of absolute nihilism, absolute total dehumanization, degradation.” - Fleming Rutledge, Fleming Rutledge on Easter

The endgame for God is not ONLY to save souls, but also to grow the eternal family, and develop our character for this and the next eternal experience.

“The Christian optimism is based on the fact that we do NOT fit in to the world.” - GK Chesterton, Orthodoxy

He Has Overcome

Eternal Hope overcomes even the darkest of places.

When we hold onto something else, other than the hope God gives us, we become fearful when our idols come under threat.

“Fear is the response of the human heart when its one thing is threatened.”

~ Augustine (354-430), bishop, theologian, philosopher, and author

And the flipside of fear is love.

Love is transformative. 

“Love is the only fire that is hot enough to melt the iron obstinacy of a creature’s will.” ~ Alexander MacLaren (1826-1910), English minister

Life is a tragedy. We have to live in that place.

The new life is resurrection. We have to move to that place of love. 

We are caught between two worlds. God will move us towards “count it all joy” when we allow Him. 

Resurrection is our liberation from this fear, and towards His love, so that we can be joyful when things are dark. 

“The word "redemption" is almost a technical term for "Exodus"; it of course awakens echoes of slave markets, but the primary biblical slave market was the Egyptian from which God freed the descendent of Abraham.” - NT Wright, The Day The Revolution Began, P271

We are to overcome all oppressors. And to sustain eternal freedom.

The more transformed we become, the less that is left behind to be further nailed on the cross.

To be given infinite life with God is to be given a vast treasure. With a vast treasure, we are to generously give it away as God did with us to others. 

Especially the poor in spirit and those seemingly destined to eternal poverty.

"Jesus is the true Messiah, whose inaugurated rule will overthrow the rule of the powers of this world." - NT Wright, The Day the Revolution Began, p210