Sadness Into Joy

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Oct 11, 2017
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Sadness is part of life. It never exempts anyone. We remove sadness from our thinking by not thinking about it. Therefore, we deceive ourselves that anything that is out of sight is not real. Part and parcel of being human, sadness paints that gray tint in life. We can pretend it is not there; we can drown it with activities until we drop from exhaustion or we can accept it, face it, shed a tear for it, and move on.
Sadness come in different forms or results from different circumstances such as a loss of job, death of a loved one, a debilitating disease that wrecks the body, a messy divorce, a dead end relationship, a tasteless religion, a boring routine, and a life that lost its meaning.
These formidable episodes are like dark clouds gathering, slowing moving in our direction, dim our world, devouring the light, sap our strength, leaving us alone, cold, bewildered and afraid.

A couple of years back, sadness became real, stayed long uninvited, broke my heart and taught me a lesson. Months of despair, fear, uncertainty, renewed hope, and loss followed. I was taking care of my ailing mother. Cancer is a terrible disease, physically and emotionally exhausting for the caregivers. I personally decided to take care of her. The pain she felt was very painful for me. Never such pain and suffering drove me to despondency. The tears she secretly shed broke my resolve, crushed my heart as I shed my own tears in silence. How can such a disease eat a life? Extinguish a dream? It destroyed my false notion of invulnerability, opened my mind in the reality of death. How fragile life can be. One day we spent a time with a loved one and then without any notice that person is gone.

Where do we look for comfort? Where can we find solace? Who can understand what we felt? Who can hear the tormented beatings of our hearts? For the sudden longing of one gone forever, who can ease our pain? So what do we do? We wallow in sadness.

We can’t look in ourselves for strength for there would be none there. Neither can we look around for consolation; there are limits other people can lend. Looking up to God for comfort, drawing near to Him for solace, and bowing down in humility to One who knows us and had been acquainted with sorrow and grief. There we find release. In Him, we find respite.

For One who wept unashamedly at the tomb of a friend, Jesus knows the pain of losing someone close, a dear friend, and the loss was intense. As He wept, the people who were present commented on how He had loved Lazarus. Jesus knows the appalling emotion of the bereaved, who are half awaked, half stunned, fully confused, and fully heart broken.

For One who was easily moved by the anguished crying of a mother at the funeral of her son, His compassion is unending; His heart is easily touched by silently tormented, unrelenting cries of wrecked souls gasping for relief. Can a God like Him forsake and not stirred to do something?

For the One who said “Come unto me those who are heavily laden and I will give you rest”, Jesus Who is both life and truth will do what He says because He cannot lie and deny Himself. He will be the life of a life that suffered the loss and make it new, and He will be the strength for the future ahead.

For One whose eyes see the heart, felt the pain of rejection, and One who himself betrayed and left alone by His friends at eventide in Gethsemane, He will never leave us abandoned; He will never ever forsake us. He laid His life for us in the cross because He loved us so much; that alone is a reason sufficient of never leaving us in times of despair.

Sadness will always be a part of life. It will surely come and will eventually depart. But Jesus Christ, Who lives in our heart, will be there when sadness, pain, loss and heartaches come. The best part is that He will never depart. He will share our joys, equally be present in our sadness.