Two teeth yanked from her mouth. Last time, it was five. I grab an ice pack, bring it to my adult daughter who is staying with us, post surgery.
I expect pain, suffering, anguish from the gaping holes left in her mouth, where her pearly whites were taken.
In my experience, any hole, loss, surgery leaving scars, requires heavy nurturing, lots of pampering, and tender care, closely following medical experts instruction.
But my daughter, the one just drugged to unconciousness, hours later wakes and starts dancing.
She sits on the carpet with her Preschool-aged sisters and laughs, with gauze in her cheeks protruding.
How can she display such joy amidst suffering?
Yet, this phenomenon has repeated itself over and over again.
As a Pre-teen, she had five teeth taken out. I sent out a prayer chain, asking for quick healing for my baby of ten years.
And again, she was up dancing.
I insisted she go back to bed, apply ice, take her medicaiton…But she didn’t want it. “I am fine”, she insisted.
A joyous heart bubbling over for all to see. Typical behavior, since the day she was born.
JOY
I grab a three-pack of holiday pillows, running through a store. I purchase them because of their color, crimson red, matching my seasonal decore.
I open the package and read in white, across the smallest pillow, “J-O-Y”.
I open a John Piper article, “Joy” leaps out from the letters. A song comes on. “Joy” is highlighted, again and again.
God keeps whispering this theme. Yet I squirm in pain, while explaining to him all the reasons why joy can’t be experienced, especially in seasons of darkness.
The song, “I Have Decided”, speaks, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus….Who for the JOY set before Him endured the cross.”
Jesus was looking forward, towards the joy of sitting next to His Father in heaven…
Blood drenched hands, anguished feet, shooting pain up through his body. Yet, Joy was amid the pain. Joy was sustainable despite everything Jesus suffered.
The punctured wounds of Jesus flesh held no precidence over the worth and love God felt, for me….for you.
But, Can Joy Really Co-Exist With Pain?
Authors Marc Morozov writes in his description about his book, “The Joy of Suffering”…
“Many times, we thank God for blessings, but we do not thank him for the suffering. Why should we thank him for the hardships? Because he is with us in the midst of them.”
God was present with Jesus on the cross. He was with my twenty-four year-old as she entered the world, cold sting of the air brushing against her skin.
Both did not cry out.
My daughter looked around, fully present, fully assured, this life was worth the pain. Joy was her reward, regardless of her circumstances.
Morozov contiues, “It is better to be with Jesus during the hardships then to be without him during the blessings.”
Maybe it’s not IF we suffer, but what we are looking at when we suffer that counts?
It’s about the condition of our hearts? The purity of our hands? The quality of our roots that sprout out, amidst suffering?
Titus 1:15 tells us, “To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.”
A pure heart, perhaps, cannot be corrupted by pain.
It will not look at the gap, in their hands or their mouth, and give pain credit for the way they behave.
The pure, will not grovel and doubt, question and twist their minds like pretzels, trying to figure out who is to blame, what kind of pain they are experiencing and why the world might have betrayed them.
The pure just love and go on. They find joy in suffering.
Piper continues, “If it’s true that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him…then joy or satisfaction in God is a mandate. It’s not optional.”
Our hearts can leap though in pain. Our minds can rejoice and give praise, even when we are hurting. Our lives can glorify God, amid pain, in a way that’s unexplainable.
Joy isn’t conditional upon our circumstances, it’s a reflection of our inner countenance.
Pain can’t create ugliness in us, it only surfaces what was already in us all along.
Pain tests our hearts, reflects what we are rooted in. It highlights our focus and exposes what we know to be true, in the very core of our being.
James doesn’t hint, but instructs us to, “Count it all JOY when you meet (or face) trials of all kinds”. (James 1:2)
James goes on, trails or the “testing of your faith, produces steadfastness.” He adds, we should, “let steadfastness have its full affect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (v.3-4)
Paul was content in his weakness. (2 Cor. 12:10) “I am content in weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities.”
He concludes in a verse most know well, “For when I am weak, I am strong.”
Strength and weakness connected? Joy and suffering, married? Trials and perseverance joined in such a refreshing way, 
it can give us hope and peace?
What does Scripture, Jesus, and my daughter know, that I may be lacking? That faith doesn’t equal ease? Christianity was never meant to be safe and appeasing, comfortable or free from difficulties?
If Christ suffered, so will we?
And it is in the joint suffering, we may rejoice and be glad, because His glory will be revealed. (1 Peter 4:13)
Joy can bubble deep in us, in the middle of suffering. Not that we are always spinning and dancing like my daughter whose teeth were recently extracted…
But in a way that keeps us steady, sure, solid and secure.
Christ is alive within us. And this present suffering doesn’t compair to the glory we will experience.
The cross wasn’t the end of the story. My daughter’s gaping wounds in her mouth wasn’t the last thing she has experienced.
There was healing. There is hope. There can be joy, even during the most painful things we experience.
We choose joy by looking to him, by purifying our hearts, so that no polluted spur will rise in us when trials occur.
We remain trusting, we have a hope that is not shaken by any situation you or I might be facing.
He is our joy, though this world may have suffering.
And I will fix my eyes on Him. A promise secure. A hope that is sure. A future that is bright. Because He is by my side. Whom shall I fear?
- How might you find joy amidst suffering?
- Where do your eyes point, when life becomes difficult?
- Do you believe light can be our hearts hope and joy can be our countenance, even in the hard?
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22-23) It can not be manufactured.
At the same time, Joy does not completely discount any trials we may be facing.
Joy is the sustaining foundation we stand upon. A grace, given to us by Christ, amid suffering.
If Paul, beaten and shackled, battered through storms, flogged, on house arrest, and left in a dungeonous prison, can plead with the people of Phillippi…
“Rejoice in the Lord, always. Again, I say rejoice.”
Then, friend, what are our excuses?
