You have sorrow now, BUT

Sometimes I just feel like giving up on this whole writing business. And with Easter approaching I somehow feel like if I skip out on my Easter posts, then I’m done for good. I can’t imagine a world of writing without an Easter post in it. So since I’m not giving up on writing just yet (I feel like this has to be a normal writing torment right?), here we are.
But life easily gets in the way and sometimes doing what you love just seems too hard to figure out. I’m sure I’m not the only person who feels this way. Far beyond all the normalcy filling my time, I know so many people going through deep deep loss or agonizing difficulty. Forget about struggling to find time to squeeze in a little hobby or interest, so many people are fighting to face another day and to find even the smallest sliver of hope or fragment of joy. This is a fight that I’m sure Jesus’ best friends were fighting on what we call Good Friday. Their whole world just came crumbling down around them. The best friend they loved and man whom they built all their lives and beliefs on had been mocked and murdered. It must have seemed as though everything that held them up had been stripped away and they were left exposed and alone. I can’t fathom the loss that filled their hearts. I can’t fathom the loss that fills some of your hearts.

 But as Jesus prepared the disciples, he promised them “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:22) If the men and women who had Jesus, and lost Jesus could be promised that they would rejoice again, how much more for us? How much more can we believe that our hearts will rejoice again? Pain feels like a dead end. Loss feels like you hit the end of your road and everyone else just keeps going on a road that goes as far as the eye can see. It feels like the end. Most of us have experienced feeling like you just want to shake every person buying groceries or playing soccer or going on with their lives and you want to say “How can you go on with life? Don’t you know what’s happened?! Don’t you understand what I’ve lost?” I can’t say it for sure, because that exact conversation is not printed in the bible, but I can imagine that the disciples felt that way. Losing the Savior must have brought intense and overwhelming grief.

Maybe they were just hanging on by a thread. Maybe you’re hanging by a thread. Maybe you remember a time when life was that hard. I know I do. But if you are hanging on…grab hold of this and don’t let go…

“Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”

If times are hard, Good Friday might feel like a better fit than Easter Sunday. But that isn’t what’s true is it? Easter Sunday is coming! It’s coming and you can remember that you are free, that you walk in light, that you were taken from death to life. It’s coming, friend.