Laughing with joy
by Pauline Simonsen
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Those who sow in tears [will] reap with songs of joy (Psalm 126:5).
When have you ‘sown in tears’?
When has the work you were doing, the service you were giving, the love you were offering, been a labour accompanied by weeping?
Maybe it’s happening right now. It may be that the work is hard and exhausting, or you are experiencing negativity or challenges from people you work with. Or you can’t see if any good will come from your efforts. Perhaps you are losing heart in a dry spiritual desert.
This beautiful psalm of ascents, sung as the people of God walked up to Jerusalem for worship, recalled the astonished joy of their ancestors when God acted for them, rescuing them from their troubles, bringing them home. Exodus from Egypt, return from Babylon … ‘When the Lord restored our fortunes, we were like those who dream …’ Really? Can this goodness be true? Our God has done great things for us, again?
And they laughed with joy!
Many times, Israel’s people went out weeping, carrying seed to sow, but it was sown in hardship or foreign lands. But such is the loving goodness and wonderful grace of their God that they returned to their homeland with arms full of harvest sheaves, laughing with joy! The Lord is a restorer of fortunes.
Our Lord Jesus sowed in tears: tears over Jerusalem, weeping in the garden. He saw the bitter road ahead, the hard, exhausting work. He saw the cruel opposition of people around him, even perhaps wondering in his humanity if he was truly hearing the plans of God rightly. Perhaps it was all coming to nothing? ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
But I wonder if he laughed aloud that early morning when he stood in the dawn garden, freed from grave clothes, full of life, a victor over death itself. I wonder if the joy of God filled his heart as he knew his redemption work was finished and the harvest was beginning!
Wherever you are, whatever the sorrow you are experiencing in your calling, remember that your God is a restorer of fortunes. And may you be filled with the joy of hope, sure hope, that in his kingdom, those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy!
Lord Jesus, you know the tears of frustration and sadness that overwhelm us in our walk. Come to us in these times and speak your words of life and hope to us again. Remind us of the armfuls of harvest we will hold one day in the future. Fill us with your joy, God of all goodness! Amen.
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