Good news and ginger tea 😊 We live with joy in trust

Isaiah 60:20

“Your sun shall no more go down, nor your moon withdraw itself; for the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning shall be ended.”

A few years ago, while driving home from the grocery store one wintry day.

I was going around a bend in the road when my car decided not to turn with the bend but continued to go straight. As I attempted to get my vehicle to follow the curve in the road, my car spun out on the ice and whipped around three times on an otherwise busy road. Landing in the opposite direction in someone’s front yard.

I was untouched, but I sat at the side of the road and dissolved with tears that were mixed fear and joy.

Our emotions are often mixed, aren’t they? In this broken world, storm clouds of fear and sorrow are often intermingled with joy.

You see, Christian joy does not die when sorrows overflow into our life. Joy and sorrow in the Christian life are sim-ul-taneous.

For example, in 1 Peter 1: 3-6, we are told: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials.

This is a simultaneous experience…

This is the nature of the Christian life… it’s not either or.

2 Corinthians 6:10 simply says, “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

For followers of Jesus these are simultaneous events. So, when we experience sorrow in our lives as Christians, which we do and will experience regularly, our joy does not end, not even momentarily.

On Veteran’s day year it will have been 19 yrs. since Timmy died. (My little boy)

I’ll never forget that days events, the shock and the grief, the helplessness and the emptiness I felt inside.

Yet, Alongside loss, massive, painful, heart-wrenching, tear-flowing loss - was hope and joy.

You see, Christian joy is not meant to end with sorrow.

Isaiah tells us that God is at work doing a remarkable thing in which our sorrow will come to an end. Joy will take the place of sorrow completely when God’s work is finished.

I want to read a passage in Philippians 4: 4-7, and I would like for you to receive it as though Christ himself, is speaking it to you.

"Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Don’t be anxious for anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

And please do not break apart these verses because by doing so we remove the context that’s being spoken here…

The peace of God cannot guard our hearts if we are anxious and not praying.

For we have every reason to rejoice and to always be rejoicing… The Lord is at hand!

 
And remember in anticipation of that day, [the day when all mourning shall be ended] we live with sorrow… in hope… and we live with joy… in trust.

God bless…