Seeing the Connection Between Sorrow and Joy
I’m not a fan of sorrow. Being sad is not on my to-do list. Happiness and joy? Hoo boy, I’ll take those all day. I try to leave no time for sorrow, but sorrow always has a way of finding me.
But what is it that causes our sorrow? Sorrow comes when something we love is taken away.
- Now that Spring has sprung, I enjoy taking Gwendolyn the granddog for a run at the Stones River Battlefield. (She runs; I saunter.) This excursion makes me happy, but when it rains, I’m sad. Why? Because the walk I love is taken away for the day.
- As a kid, I loved going to the amusement park. Yet amid all my fun, periodically the thought would pop into my head. “Jeepers. We gotta leave in a few hours.” And later… “Aw, man we’ve got to leave in three hours.” In my joy, I wanted it to last forever, but sadness crept in when I looked at a clock.
Those are light-hearted examples, but they drive home the point. Sorrow comes when something we love is no more. (Looking at this from a totally different viewpoint, I’ll feel no sorrow if Baskin-Robbins does away with Pink Bubblegum ice cream. I have no love for it. No love; no sorrow. None. Zip. Nada.)
Let’s drop the superficial examples of sorrow, because I’m sure most of us have experienced sorrow on a whole different level. The death of a parent. Miscarriage. Divorce. A prodigal child. Someone we deeply love has been taken from us.
I’m truly sorry for any loss and sorrow you have felt, but sorrow is not always permanent. I know of one incredible example where sorrow is reversed and leads to incredible joy.
No one has ever known sorrow like Jesus did. It was not His sorrow, though; it was ours. Tomorrow is Good Friday, the day when He took our sins as His own and paid the ultimate price. He was crucified and died.
“Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted” (Isa. 53:4).
Why would Jesus do this? In His infinite love for us, He didn’t want to leave us in the sorrow of our sin, the sorrow of the judgment and condemnation that was rightfully ours. By taking our sorrows as His own, He made it possible for us to be set free from those sorrows, to come into an eternally joy-filled relationship with God.
“For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2).
The sorrow Jesus felt—the anguish!—was the moment He was separated from the One He loved: God the Father. Yet He endured it all for our sake. For the follower of Jesus, the sorrow of our sin has been replaced with joy.
Earlier this week, my wife and I went to the funeral visitation for the mother of a good friend. She and her mother were close, like best friends. Yet, as we talked with our friend, she expressed both sadness and joy, but the joy was far greater than her sorrow. She told us, “I know exactly where my mother is. She’s with Jesus, and it’s only for a short period that we are apart.”
As David said so poetically, “Weeping may stay overnight, but there is joy in the morning” (Ps. 30:5).
May you find your joy in Jesus.
Subscribe to this blog or like our Facebook page. And share this post with others.
If you would like a printable version of this, check out PrintFriendly.
Banner photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash
