Sobs of Sorrows to Tearless Joy

“Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made glad” (Ecclesiastes 7:3).

On my road to recovery—from a slavish ruling Adamic nature to a soul gently governed by the divine nature of Christ—I have sobbed many tears of sorrow, been corrected much, and chastised often. During the last stages of my spiritual adolescence—when I, like many teenagers in the natural, felt ugly, awkward and hopeless of ever maturing—I wrote a long and rambling piece I entitled, “Overcoming Overmuch Sorrow.” In it, I bemoaned some deep and personal shortcomings, and despaired of ever overcoming them; in reality, it was hardly more than a pity party in writing.

I ended that article in as positive a note as I could muster at the time. But after a few years, God brought me out to a large, well-lit and joyful place. Consequently, the Lord prompted me to add one additional paragraph to it. I wrote:

“My hope is no longer deferred! All external circumstantial evidence to the contrary—my physical health has never been worse, I have no wife beside me, and a bleak financial outlook—God has brought me out to a large place, a Promised Land place flowing with milk and honey, a place of great joy. I am walking on water! I am walking on a crystal sea comprised of all the sobbed tears of my painfully extruded myrrh which hollowed out my heart and opened me up to the fullness of Christ within; a myrrh which began to bloom in the flames of sorrow, but which is now fully flowered as a molten sheen of purified glass, a solid and wave-less emotional-state-of-being-pavement upon which I now live out a joy more permanent than the carnal vagaries of sentimental happiness. My golden years look bright, purified to a translucency so clear as to make my reflection clean, sharp, and Christ-like. Now I understand, O’ my precious Lord, why I was afflicted!”

But before I punctuated my article with this happy ending, I ended the article quoting Oswald Chambers. He said that “God called Jesus Christ to what seemed unmitigated disaster. Jesus Christ called His disciples to see Him put to death; He led every one of them to the place where their hearts were broken. Jesus Christ’s life was an absolute failure from every standpoint but God’s. But what seemed failure from man’s standpoint was a tremendous triumph from God’s, because God’s purpose is never man’s purpose.”

This “unmitigated disaster” which Jesus seemed to come to, is of course along the lines of natural thinking. It is only natural that the animal aspect of our being fight to save itself, but God’s purpose is to reconstitute us along a supernatural line. In order to reach that purpose, we must die outwardly whilst daily coming to life inwardly. Until our mortal bodies resurrect and become immortal bodies, we sew SOBS OF SORROW until TEARLESS JOY is realized. “Though the outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). The devolving nature of our bodies is an evil thing left merely to itself; and it involves overmuch sorrow. But the evolving nature of Christ in our hearts is a good thing left merely to God; and it involves overmuch joy.

But before we entered into his sufferings, he entered into ours. Jesus—“despised and forsaken of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3)—nonetheless endured this disfigurement of sin and shame for our sakes in order to reach joy inexpressible and full of glory for everyone “that believeth.” Because Jesus is innately an endless life, it is impossible for his body to decompose. He was therefore the first of many brethren to model immortal flesh. Death is disgraceful and painful beyond natural recovery, but “this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18).

It is easy to think we live our best lives now; it is preached incessantly from sacred and secular pulpits alike. But that is delusion. The truth is that paradise and heaven are where joy is inexpressible and perpetually present; in pilgrim attire—as we pass through this evil context known as fallen earth—we rejoice by faith and eat the fruit of joy by supernaturally encountering the deposit of the Holy Spirit guaranteeing a future experience of fullness. Our capacity for everlasting joy therefore increases in direct proportion to the sorrow we experience and carry here on earth. We scale the heights of joy only to the degree we plumb the depths of sorrow. Jesus, a man of sorrows, knew that even transitory crucifixion is “light momentary affliction” compared to eternal joy. “For he himself endured a cross and thought nothing of its shame because of the joy he knew would follow his suffering” (Hebrews 12:2).

An example of joy emerging from sorrow is seen in Solomon’s wisdom; first he said, “Better is the end of a thing than the beginning of it” (Ecclesiastes 7:8). Then, “If a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all; yet let him [seriously] remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. All that comes is vanity (emptiness, falsity, vainglory, and futility)! ... [Also] remove [the lusts that end in] sorrow and vexation from your heart and mind and put away evil from your body, for youth and the dawn of life are vanity [transitory, idle, empty, and devoid of truth]” (Ecclesiastes 11:8, 10). Indeed—“the beginning of it—“youth and the dawn of life are vanity.” Man is irredeemable within his first Adam caste; “sorrow and vexation” of “heart and mind” is all there is to experience there. “For what does a man get from all his labor and from the striving and sorrow of his heart with which he labors under [this present] sun? For all his days his work is painful and sorrowful; even at night his mind does not rest” (Ecclesiastes 2:22-23). Joy—which is “the end of a thing”—must therefore come in the morning of a new day and a new life!

The greatly multiplied grief and pain of childbirth for woman and the sweat and toil of man to produce food from insipid soil is cursed Adam in a woeful state of irredeemable sorrow. Endless life and joy can only be realized after death (the last enemy) is vanquished. Resurrection is now Adam’s only hope! In support of these thoughts, let us vest in the afterlife rather than this life. In closing, I wish to highlight Henry Ward Beecher’s comments concerning this verse of scripture: “And there was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulcher” (Matt. 27:61):

“How strangely stupid is grief. It neither learns nor knows nor wishes to learn or know. When the sorrowing sisters sat over against the door of God’s sepulcher, did they see the two thousand years that have passed triumphing away? Did they see anything but this: ‘Our Christ is gone!’ Your Christ and my Christ came from their loss; myriad mourning hearts have had resurrection in the midst of their grief; and yet the sorrowing watchers looked at the seed-form of this result, and saw nothing. What they regarded as the end of life was the very preparation for coronation; for Christ was silent that He might live again in tenfold power. They saw it not. They mourned, they wept, and went away, and came again, driven by their hearts to the sepulcher. Still it was a sepulcher, unprophetic, voiceless, lusterless. So with us. Every man sits over against the sepulcher in his garden, in the first instance, and says, ‘This woe is irremediable. I see no benefit in it. I will take no comfort in it.’ And yet, right in our deepest and worst mishaps, often, our Christ is lying, waiting for resurrection. Where our death seems to be, there our Savior is. Where the end of hope is, there is the brightest beginning of fruition. Where the darkness is thickest, there the bright beaming light that never is set is about to emerge. When the whole experience is consummated, then we find that a garden is not disfigured by a sepulcher.”