Living With Both Joy and Sorrow is Living Full

 

In this world we have sorrow.

In this world we experience joy.

I once really struggled with how to live with both. How can I smile when I am hurting, physically or emotionally or both?

How can I say I am well when I'm not?

I thought I had to choose until I couldn't.  Because choosing meant that one reality needed to be discarded in lieu of the one I chose. Choosing one negated the other and both were very much a reality.

That's when I discovered the peace of living with both at the same time. And I realized both can coexist together. Both can be held with an equal right to be present and living with both made my life full.

Full of today.

Full of the presence of Jesus. 

Full spectrum of life's emotions. 

I can sing and cry.

I can laugh and mourn.

Picture with me one of those surveys that have a line and on one end there's the number one and on the other is the number ten.  One end says needs improvement and the other says excellent. You are supposed to rate the product you purchased or the experience you had. 

It captures and gives place to rate the spectrum of one's experience. 

So it is with joy and sorrow, pain and healing, storms and sunshine... to live with one on one end and the other on the other end; you live with the full spectrum and a life that experiences a peace which passes understanding.  

To encompass both is really to encompass the full of life.

A visual that helped me tremendously is the posture of two hands... to hold out both of my hands.  In one is placed what is hard, what hurts, and what emotion I am feeling.  In the other is placed the Greater Truths of Jesus and my choice to believe Him and if I can't in the moment, I say I want to.  In this hand is placed the choice to trust and in faith, stay with Jesus.  Then either lift them both up as an offering of praise or fold them together in a prayer for strength, for eyes to see Him, and a heart to trust.

For Jesus was fully man and fully God.  He came as an infant, born of a woman, life, flesh and blood, with feelings.  And yet, He embodies full divinity.  It's a mystery and a paradox that is the way of Jesus still today.  His ways are beyond ours but to live with both/and is to live fully alive in Him.

To experience pain is to know and experience healing.

To know disappointment is to realize there is hope.

To experience loss opens the way for comfort.

To know darkness is to experience the gift of light.

To be dead spiritually is to realize and experience the gift of our Saviour, Jesus and His life.

So the wrestle continues not in a new way of believing Him, but in a way each time something happens to choose Him again.  To choose to stay with Him, now, today and to find Him again in this both/and.

In The Darkness, Light Pierces

 

Dark. Night. 

Not many of us are comfortable in the dark. In fact, from little up we fight the dark, being scared, having night lights, etc.  

Children are naturally scared of the dark. That seems to be a phase all children go through or at least mine did.

I remember one of my sons 'seeing' the shadows as terrifying animals out to get him, that he wouldn't even get up at night to go the bathroom, in the safety of his home. Night after night. 

Most adults aren't comfortable with dark. I am more than I used to be, but I still have times when I wonder what's lurking in the shadows waiting to take me down. Waiting to pounce on me as I walk past. Images appear and in the dark they become distorted. We're not in control because we can't see very far into the distance. 

In the same way, in our minds, the darkness of pain, loneliness, fears can overtake us. We walk through our days wondering when they'll pounce on us, and even feeling like they've overtaken us. We can't 'see' far into the future, not even around the next bend.  Images appear, those thoughts taking shape in our minds. 

Darkness.

The night Jesus came, 400 years of silence preceded. Silence. 

Ongoing quiet. No word from God through prophets to the people. 

Quiet. Silence. Hard Roman rule. 

Longings. Wanting someone bigger to overtake the Roman rule. Deliverance. 

The night Jesus was born, light pierced the physical darkness. 

Shepherds were tending their flocks on a hillside at night, when an angel appeared, piercing the dark night with the glory of the Lord, and the shepherds were afraid. 

The angel told them to not fear because I have good news, a Saviour is born!

The angel gave them more details on where to find this Saviour and then suddenly! There was a multitude of angels, praising God with these words, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, God will toward men."

Peace. Goodwill. Light. Really?? After the years of silence and crushing Roman rule??

The shepherds looked at one another and said, "Let us go... and see...."

They went with haste. 

Light always brings hope. Light brings anticipation. Light reveals. Light reveals what is really true. 

But Light doesn't always look like we think it should. 

In a stable.

To shepherds on a hillside in the dark of night. 

After 400 years of silence. 

The promise of a Saviour. 

Miracles.

Where were you,  Jesus?

Healings.

But Jesus ...

Death on a cross, seeming death to all they thought would happen and what saving them looked like in their minds. 

The living and walking out of that hope and promise was often disappointing and led to disillusionment. 

Many turned away, walked away. And in the end, not even His disciples stayed with Him.

Why? I think if we look deep into our hearts, we can answer that. 

How many times has there been silence in our stories? The darkness overwhelmed us and we felt all alone on our hillside, waiting another night for Light to penetrate. 

And we turn away.

Darkness leaves us vulnerable. We can't see far ahead. We panic because we can't control very much around us. Darkness asks us to trust, to take steps in faith. 

It's easier to walk away, to turn our backs on Jesus, and turn to what we can see or our own methods of what we think is best. 

I am so glad we have the stories after the resurrection. The disciples and many didn't stay away from God. Jesus appeared to all of the disciples as they huddled in a room.

Sometimes we're huddling, trying to grasp or understand what is or has happened, and waiting for Jesus to appear and speak to us. It's the staying, the waiting, that is brutal at times. It's the believing and hanging on to faith when darkness screams many false beliefs and our mind wrestles to believe the words of Jesus when all is quiet, that is crushing at times. But it's in the room of waiting and staying, on the hillside, that light comes. The angel of the Lord, announcing good news to us, Jesus has come. He is here!

Yes, He is here. 

Darkness is when light is most visible. Jesus pierced the darkness 2000+ years and that is still His mission, to pierce the dark parts of our stories. He wants to set us free from what imprisons us, our fears, our pain, the rejections, etc. 

He wants us to turn to His light of truth and trust Him in the darkness. 

Trust. Faith. 

Without faith it's impossible to please God and I begin to see why. There is so many times that God's ways make so little sense to my human mind frame, that to stay with Him requires me to believe in spite of what I see.  To believe Him in spite of what my heart and feelings scream to be true. 

To believe Him as my Way, the Truth, and Life to me. And to TRUST.

Let's run with haste to see Him.