Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing

I love the phrase "sorrowful yet always rejoicing".   It speaks to me so clearly of the nature of the Christian life and I'd like it as a banner across my own life and the life of my church.   As we walk through this broken, fallen world, where we only see the first fruits of the age to come breaking in from time to time (O that we would see more of the "now" in the midst of the "not yet") - there is sorrow.  There just is. There  is pain and sadness and you have to perform all manner of interpretive gymnastics with the Bible in order to be able to say otherwise. And yet....and yet there is another reality - there is rejoicing.   We rejoice because God in Christ has come to us to hold us, lift us and ultimately save us.   So we rejoice even in the midst of the trials because of the Good News that God is for us and that He has delivered us, He is delievering us and He will deliver is.

This blog post from  Trillia Newbell describes her perspective on this twin theme of joy and pain.

I have walked this earth a short 34 years, but in that time I have experienced a wide range of various trials. As a young child my parents struggled financially resulting in the occasional electricity being shut off and visits to a relative’s home. During my freshman year of college I was the victim of sexual assault (not rape thankfully). A few months later my father passed away from his battle with cancer. As a young adult I have experienced four miscarriages, general health issues, and recently the sudden loss of my oldest sister.
 

And yet, I am joyful; but not without sorrow.

Real Pain

Trials of any kind bring a rush of emotions and potentially pain. The pain is real. The sorrow is real. Trials are hard to endure at times. God never once promised this Christian life would be without trials. On the contrary, as it has been said before, all one needs to do is live long enough and surely trials will arrive.

Thankfully we have a Savior who relates to our suffering. Jesus is aware of and acquainted with the grief of man. He is acquainted with my grief and your grief. The God-Man endured trials and temptation but is without sin (Hebrews 4:15). He faced agony to the point of sweating blood (Luke 22:44).

On his way to the cross Jesus sat and prayed to his Father, if it were God’s will, to take the cup of His wrath away. And yet we know that Jesus willingly drank that cup and he hung on the cross. And in his final moments on the cross, Mark records him saying, “’Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which means, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34).

His pain and suffering was for a purpose — the redemption of the world. He endured great pain. Pain I can only imagine, pain and wrath on my behalf.


Purposeful Pain

Like Jesus — our pain has a purpose. The believer knows that there’s a great and glorious purpose in trials. Suffering is designed to purify our faith. Peter comforted the Christians in Asia Minor by reminding them (thus reminding me) of the great purpose of suffering. He writes, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire — may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 1:6–7).

Any trial or suffering I endure is a testing of the genuineness of my faith. And in The Suffering of Man and the Sovereignty of God, Charles Spurgeon addresses the genuine faith of Job tested by fire and how his faith only reflects the faith that we all desire to have. He writes, “In what better way can the believer reveal his loyalty to his Lord? He evidently follows his Master, not in fair weather only, but in the foulest and roughest ways” (121).

The beauty of faith is that it isn’t derived from me. God graciously gives me faith to believe his promises to sustain me to the end. He gives me faith to trust that he is with me in my days of trouble. All good things, including the faith to endure trails is from him (James 1:17). So though trials may come, I can be confident that he will give me the sustaining grace for them.

And I Rejoice


I can rejoice in suffering because I know I have a living hope. I know that my hope will bring me to an eternal glory. I will one day rise and be with Christ forever. I can rejoice in suffering today because I know that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put me to shame, because God's love has been poured into my heart through the Holy Spirit who has been given to me (Romans 5:3–5).

 
So though I have experienced various trials, my hope is in Christ. I rejoice during these trials in my living hope, knowing that nothing — no great trial, no pain or sorrow, and no one — shall separate me from the love of God.


Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.'
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35–39)

The Slaughter of Innocence

This post from a guy I was at college with, Brian Draper, makes a really important point about the nature of evil in the world and the impact of the the incarnation.  ‘The coming of Jesus was... a dangerous mission, a great invasion, a daring raid into enemy territory.' (John Eldredge).  It's a reminder that Christmas is about cosmic warfare, barbed wire and bullets if you will, and not just a season for sentimentality.


When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.’
Matthew 2:16-17
Lest we forget, one episode of the Christmas story is always written out of the school plays. In fact, the good news of great joy to all people spelled near immediate disaster for parents in Bethlehem, whose little boys were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Once the Magi had given Herod the slip, he tried, in evil fury, to snuff out the threat of a newborn King of the Jews. Scholars believe that in a town of around 1,000, such as Bethlehem was back then, there’d have been around 20 children killed.

20 children.

John Eldredge reminds us that humanity is a battleground. ‘I am staggered,’ he writes, ‘by the level of naivety that most people live with regarding evil. They don’t take it seriously. They don’t live as if the story has a Villain. Not the devil prancing about in red tights, carrying a pitchfork, but the incarnation of the very worst of every enemy you’ve met in every other story. Dear God – the Holocaust, child prostitution, terrorist bombings, genocidal governments. What is it going to take for us to take evil seriously?’

‘One of the things that surprised me,’ wrote C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity, ‘when I first read the New Testament seriously was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe – a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death, disease, and sin... Christianity agrees... this is a universe at war.’

We are painfully, dreadfully reminded – since the events of last week in Newtown, Connecticut – that the advent of Christ is not, in fact, a kitsch nativity scene in a mall in mid-winter; nor a sentimental moment for the kids to shine, as the star, or Mary, or Joseph, in the play, lovely though that is... but a crucial moment in a battle played out both on a cosmic scale and in our own hearts. ‘The coming of Jesus was... a dangerous mission,’ says Eldredge, ‘a great invasion, a daring raid into enemy territory.’

And lest we forget, advent has nothing to do with the triumph of religion, nor the vindication of our own belief system, but the incarnation of the very best of every hero we’ve met in every other story, fighting for us. Dear God – what is it going to take for us to take this seriously?

Dear God. Dear God.
Brian Draper

The Invincible, Irrefutable Joy

This post by Tony Reinke has inspired me to take off the shelf my unread (by me) copy of Eric Metax's biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His book Life Together impacted me hugely and the fact that this one man had such an influence at such a young age (he died ages 39) inspires me to want to reach for more myself.  

When the Nazis padlocked the doors of the Confessing Church seminaries in Germany in the Autumn of 1937, Dietrich Bonhoeffer took theological training underground and opened his own seminary in Finkenwalde. Before the Gestapo shut it down in 1939, Bonhoeffer managed to train 67 seminary students.(1) These 67 seminarians and Bonhoeffer formed a band of brothers that could not be torn apart, although some of them were arrested, some were dispersed by the Nazi oppression, and several were conscripted into army service and spread across the globe by World War II(2)

Bonhoeffer was on the Nazi watch list. He was tracked closely and he was eventually forbidden to publish or preach or lecture. So to stay in touch with his former students and pastor friends, and to continue their pastoral training, Bonhoeffer resorted to a form of circular letter. First, he typed and carbon-copied each post, then he added a handwritten greeting and signature. These “personal letters” were more like theological articles published under the nose of the Nazis and distributed to his Finkenwalde brotherhood and to other closely connected pastor-friends. At its height these “personal letters” were distributed to 150 readers.(3)

In the fury of the Führer, pastors in the Confessing Church had been stripped of any official identity, and many were pressed into the military and forced to fight for the very Nazis they hated. Seeing no way around it, many volunteered for military service. The “illegal pastors” that didn’t join willingly were branded by the Gestapo as “unemployed,” a label that rushed a conscripted soldier to the very front lines of the escalating war.(4) Needless to say, the lifespan of pastors connected to Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church was not long under Hitler.

Yet in spite of the scattering of the Finkenwalde seminarians, Bonhoeffer worked tirelessly to track the activities of his friends, to keep the circle informed of the latest news of their brotherhood, and to provide encouragement to them. And so Bonhoeffer turned to these circular letters, often opening them with the latest news of whom among them had been killed in the war.

During the Advent of 1942, just a few months before he was finally arrested and sent off to a Nazi prison — where he would be tried and then eventually killed — Bonhoeffer drafted and distributed one final circular letter to his Finkenwalde seminarians.

What do you say to dispersed and lonely pastors, who are serving illegally in secrecy? What do you say to friends forced into Nazi military service? How do you comfort the brotherhood when they learn friends have died in the forsaken war? How do you address the daily anxiety, the persecutions, the threats, and the loneliness felt by the scattered fellowship?

Bonhoeffer was aware that the real danger of the horrific daily anxiety, the constant threat of death, and the unceasing war, was how these forces conspire to callous and deaden the soul’s affections. Shepherds with such disheartened souls were of little use in leading God’s thirsty people to springs of joy.

This was one of the many battles Bonhoeffer fought in the final years of his life. One theater was a battle against Hitler. Another theater was a battle for his friends. The battle was against acedia in their hearts, against the temptation to spiritual apathy and sloth, and against the temptation to simply surrender to all of the pressures. Bonhoeffer had his own plan for taking down Hitler, but to battle the lethargy in his friends, Bonhoeffer pointed their thoughts towards Advent and to the believer’s joy in Christ.

Such a joy is fitting for suffering. “The joy of God,” he wrote to them, “has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable.”

What follows is Bonhoeffer’s final circular letter to his friends, written on November 29, 1942.

Dear Brother …,

At the beginning of a letter that in this solemn hour is meant to call you all to true joy, there necessarily stand the names of those brothers who have died since I last wrote to you: P. Wälde, W. Brandenburg, Hermann Schröder, R. Lynker, Erwin Schutz, K. Rhode, Alfred Viol, Kurt Onnasch, Fritz’s second brother; in addition to them, and presumably known to many of you, Major von Wedemeyer and his oldest son, Max.

“Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads” [Isaiah 35:10]. We are glad for them; indeed, should we say that we sometimes secretly envy them? From early times the Christian church has considered acedia — the melancholy of the heart, or “resignation” — to be one of the mortal sins. “Serve the Lord with joy” [Psalm 100:2] — thus do the scriptures call out to us. For this our life has been given to us, and for this it has been preserved for us unto the present hour.

This joy, which no one shall take from us, belongs not only to those who have been called home but also to us who are alive. We are one with them in this joy, but never in melancholy. How are we going to be able to help those who have become joyless and discouraged if we ourselves are not borne along by courage and joy? Nothing contrived or forced is intended here, but something bestowed and free.

Joy abides with God, and it comes down from God and embraces spirit, soul, and body; and where this joy has seized a person, there it spreads, there it carries one away, there it bursts open closed doors.

A sort of joy exists that knows nothing at all of the heart’s pain, anguish, and dread; it does not last; it can only numb a person for the moment. The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye, but it finds life precisely within it.

What matters is this joy that has overcome. It alone is credible; it alone helps and heals. The joy of our companions who have been called home is also the joy of those who have overcome — the Risen One bears the marks of the cross on his body. We still stand in daily overcoming; they have overcome for all time. God alone knows how far away or near at hand we stand to the final overcoming in which our own death may be made joy for us.

Some among us suffer greatly because they are internally deadening themselves against so much suffering, such as these war years bring in their wake. One person said to me recently, “I pray every day that I may not become numb.” That is by all means a good prayer.

And yet we must guard ourselves against confusing ourselves with Christ. Christ endured all suffering and all human guilt himself in full measure — indeed, this was what made him Christ, that he and he alone bore it all. But Christ was able to suffer along with others because he was simultaneously able to redeem from suffering. Out of his love and power to redeem people came his power to suffer with them.

We are not called to take upon ourselves the suffering of all the world; by ourselves we are fundamentally not able to suffer with others at all, because we are not able to redeem. But the wish to suffer with them by one’s own power will inevitably be crushed into resignation. We are called only to gaze full of joy at the One who in reality suffered with us and became the Redeemer.

Full of joy, we are enabled to believe that there was and is One to whom no human suffering or sin is foreign and who in deepest love accomplished our redemption. Only in such joy in Christ the Redeemer shall we be preserved from hardening ourselves where human suffering encounters us.(5)

We can imagine it was this joy Bonhoeffer clung to after his arrest and during his 18 months in Tegel, a lonely Nazi interrogation prison. The living conditions there were putrid. It was often rocked by bombing raids, day and night. Bonhoeffer suffered from the loneliness of separation from his fiancée and his family. He was weakened by physical ills in his body and haunted by occasional suicidal thoughts from his tortured mind.(6) Surely it was this invincible joy from God, in Christ, that preserved his life in the Tegel prison and provided him hope for the worst, which for him was still yet to come.


1 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 15, Theological Education Underground, 1937–1940 (Fortress Press, 2012), 5.

2 Bonhoeffer wrote Life Together to explain how closely and intentionally these 68 men pursued fellowship together.

3 Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 16, Conspiracy and Imprisonment: 1940–1945 (Fortress, 2006), 105.

4 Ibid., 6.

5 Ibid., 377–378.

6 Eberhard Bethge, Dietrich Bonhoeffer: A Biography (Fortress, 2000), 799, 831–833.