When Sorrow Strikes and Joy Is Justice

When sorrow sinks in like a morning fog in London, tiny hands can’t keep it back.  It moves, eerie and quiet, dark shadows tauntingly saying, “there is no way to dispel this feeling”.

Broken music already cries throughout the internet: Past losses, divorces, car accidents, victims of terrible crimes or abuses.

And like the thief of our lives; bells and whistles, and a tiny manger can get lost when we can’t find your way out of your well-walled houses or through the thickness of your own internal fog.

I am no expert on loss…but I have battled the dark and the fog of my own soul significantly in my past. And I can attest that resisting, and warring, and naming and claiming “joy” will never get you through the darkest and most painful realities of crushing circumstances.

For sorrow is a battle that none of us can “control”.  

Sorrow comes when we feel powerless to the results of something bigger that takes hold. A fog that shadows the life we thought we should have lived, a purpose we want to end like we intended.  A person or situation failing us in the deepest sense…

And us becoming powerless to it, until we have no where to go…but lower.

And we may be called to wrestle hard for joy.  But isn’t the wrestling less about us “winning” and more about what God wants to do in us….humbling, weakening us, so that our flesh surrenders fully to the one who must be the only hope we have?

Still, wrestling for joy, apart from God, will never free us.  The only hope is when we turn our trust to God, one who is faithful, omnipresent, and omnipotent.

Still we, at times, can seem to “find” joy and lose it, if we do not get that we have a God of justice who in His time guarantees to make all things right.

I mean, what about the….

• Loved one we lost at this time in years past?  
• What about the tragedy that left us paralyzed, fear-filled, and devastated?
• What about the sickness that sneaks up upon us, or the ones we love…and we don’t know how to deal with it, and find joy at the same times?
• What about the loss, and loneliness, and sorrow and betrayal of those we though were with us, for us….and now they have left us  Or are against us?

What about the injustices that we didn’t earn, or deserve, or do anything to wish upon ourselves this season?

Scripture tells us….God is a God who executes justice.  He may do it on this earth, or He will do it after all has passed from us. But He will and is judging the earth, undeniably.

Still, until we can trust His justice, we can’t ever truly find long standing peace, joy, and contentment.  We can’t truly be still in the silence until we trust that our God will redeem everything broken, everything taken from us, everything that is twisted, and not right here in this fog ridden world that we live in.

“For I the Lord love justice” Isaiah 61:8 tells us, and righteousness and justice go hand in hand all throughout the Old Testament.

And ultimately, we (or anyone else) is not the judge of our circumstances….God is!

For this battle is not ours anyway, and any sorrow during this season is not ours to struggle through.  Christ died so that He can take away our tears, take the sadness, take any hopelessness we might be feeling, and exchange it for the fruits of His Spirit….love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc.

I encourage you today, don’t try to analyze, evaluate, or fix your feelings.  Don’t try to wrap up sorrow as if “it’s just part of your plight”. Don’t let the fog become your identity, or sadness be a label for your life….

Seek help if you must, but look to the one who died that we might trust Him to part the skies.

He is a God of justice.  And we can find joy in trusting Him.  He will and is aligning all things, making all things right, in His time…for His glorious purposes.