Once again, my apologies as it’s been quite some time since I posted a blog so please forgive me. As I’ve said before I have no idea who reads this blog, if anyone actually does, but I’m hoping I can just be honest with you, whoever it is that’s out there?
Lately, I’ve been attending a few family funerals and my heart has been in what I would call a ‘heavy’ season; a season full of sorrow. Grieving, loss, and so on. But now (oooh … I just committed a big ‘English No No’ by starting a sentence with the word BUT), I’m starting to experience joy again! Even that comment, the one I just made, helps me to realize that I’m starting to feel, well … some would say ‘better’, but then what is ‘better’ anyway? The lack of discomfort? The absence of pain? Is ‘better’ an accurate description?
Which leads me to my next point: I don’t know why it is that so many people try to avoid the sorrow in their lives? We’ll ALL have to deal with sorrow at some point, that’s a given, but I’m saddened by the thought that so many people miss out on what I would say, is perhaps the most intimate time of fellowship we could ever have with the Lord! David knew this, just read the Psalms! A ‘tender warrior’ indeed! God is always there for us, we just need to be real with him! Don’t get me wrong, I love joy, and I don’t pray for sorrow, but I think that they are in fact one. Why you say? Well … just think of this: God exists in a state of everything all at once. He’s everything everywhere, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. Birth and death at the same time, acceptance and rejection at the same time, love and hatred co-exist, and he experiences joy and sorrow with us 24 7. Perhaps we just need to accept that the two go hand in hand, and that its in their being together that we can participate in the ‘fullness’ of each.
So then why is it that we look at things as opposites, or one as better than the other? Wet and dry, hot and cold, black & white, life and death, or joy and sorrow, just to name a few. You wouldn’t know what one was without the other. They are in a sense ‘married’ and they are in a sense ‘one’. It is this oneness that I seek to know even more. I want to share all of my life with God. I want to know him in all of it and I want to let him know me in all of it! In closing, consider these verses as food for thought, and thanks again for letting me share my thoughts with you! Ecclesiastes 3:4, Ecclesiastes 7:2, Psalm 30:5, Psalm 30:11, Psalm 119:28, 2 Corinthians 7:10, and Revelations 21:4.
Blessings, Joe
