To Joy (part 16)
“Now is your time of grief,” Jesus told his disciples in John 16:22, and what better description of life as humans in the present too?
Because in this human life of ours there are endless causes of pain and anguish – physical, mental and emotional pain, and the underlying anguish of never quite knowing what’s going to happen next. Our life now is so much like a mother’s labour pains, fraught with the frightening helplessness at things going on inside us and to us that we have no control over.
To Jesus’ disciples it would feel that way when he was killed. It would leave them absolutely shattered, not only by the overwhelming feeling of loss of him being ripped away from them, but also the frightening helplessness of it all happening so fast and there was nothing they could do about it either. It would leave them emotionally drained, and so mentally numbed that the fishermen among them went back to fishing again, as if nothing in the last three years had happened.
But the encouraging part is that Jesus knew this was how they’d feel, so immediately after he told them, “Now is your time of grief,” he followed it up with: “BUT – I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy.”
Two points to note here: that, first of all, Jesus was concerned for his disciples and wanted to give them hope. He didn’t want them wallowing in gloom. But, secondly, he knew that the only solution to their gloom was himself. It would be seeing him alive again, and realizing their gloom was only temporary.
And isn’t that the same for us, that we too discover in our gloom that there’s a living Jesus Christ who can get us out of it? And he comes alive to us in doing that for us again and again.
So after a while it has to dawn on us that he really is alive, because even when we’re utterly helpless and in situations that offer no signs of improvement or solution, we find ourselves with such confidence, hope, peace and joy, that nothing and no one can take them away from us either…(continues Wednesday)
Buck To Basics 