Jumping for Joy?

Can grief co-exist with joy? What about pain with contentment? Do our afflictions still allow us to have a sense of personal peace? These are difficult questions to ponder, especially in the midst of great turmoil and sorrow. The Bible, though, seems to suggest that the answer is “yes” to all these questions.

One passage that helps us reach that conclusion is found in Habakkuk:

“Though the fig tree should not blossom,
     nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
     and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
     and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
     I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
     he makes my feet like the deer’s;
     he makes me tread on my high places.”

We must remember that the prophet Habukkuk wrote to a very agrarian society - and so he used the language of vines and flocks. A modern day rendering of this Scripture would surely include words that we would be much more familiar with. But the essence of the passage is the same; yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

Sometimes God takes from us what we cherish the most. Most likely that is the reason you are reading this; you have lost someone very close and dear to your heart. In the early years of grief it seems incomprehensible that joy, contentment, and peace will ever return as common emotions in our lives. But shouldn’t they? Isn’t it possible that grief, pain, and affliction will one day subside enough to allow positive emotions to surface once again?

Here is what Matthew Henry has to say regarding these verses in Habakkuk:

“But those who, when they were full, enjoyed God in all, when they are emptied and impoverished can enjoy all in God, and can sit down upon a melancholy heap of the ruins of all their creature comforts and even then can sing to the praise and glory of God, as the God of their salvation. This is the principal ground of our joy in God, that he is the God of our salvation, our eternal salvation, the salvation of the soul; and, if he be so, we may rejoice in him as such in our greatest distresses, since by them our salvation cannot be hindered, but may be furthered. Note, Joy in God is never out of season, nay, it is in a special manner seasonable when we meet with losses and crosses in the world, that it may then appear that our hearts are not set upon these things, nor our happiness bound up in them. See how the prophet triumphs in God: The Lord God is my strength, v. 19. He that is the God of our salvation in another world will be our strength in this world, to carry us on in our journey thither, and help us over the difficulties and oppositions we meet with in our way.”

If eternal salvation has been secured for us, then we can experience joy in the midst of our grief. We can feel pain and yet be contented in the reality of our future existence. And we can be filled with the peace that passes all understanding even when we are afflicted with great difficulties.

We must learn to trust God and not our circumstances. The God of our salvation in another world will indeed be our strength, both in this life and in the life to come.