Is Now a Time for Mourning or Rejoicing?
I’ve been thinking about that frequently quoted text in Ecclesiastes summed up by these words: There’s a time for everything (Eccl 3: 1-8). I’ve often quoted pieces of that passage myself: “Now is a time for rejoicing”, “Now is a time for mourning”. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to realize every day has both mourning and rejoicing. There’s never a time when I’m not doing one or the other, and at some times doing both simultaneously.
Take for instance the recent death of a dear friend. He lived his life well and sacrificially for others. He died with great dignity and respect. At his funeral, there was a strange and perhaps unique feeling of a family reunion mixed with tears. We were celebrating his life, thanking God that he was now with his Savior and also grieving for his wife and kids. It was a mix of rejoicing and sorrows, pain and peace.
This is the tension I feel daily. I look around the world and see great suffering and loss, and so I weep. There’s so much destruction, war, poverty, and desolation. There’s a need on each and every corner. If I allow myself to dwell on the needs of the world, a burden only God can truly bear, I fall into despair quite easily. And then there are the sicknesses and deaths that I have experienced in my own family. We’ve lost family to suicide and there’s something unfinished about that. We will mourn as long as we are on this earth.
And, yet, there’s a daily rejoicing. I wake up and can thank the Lord for allowing the sun to rise. I look at my children, and even on the hard days, know that they are a gift from the Lord. My marriage, though not perfect, is healthy. And there’s a whole host of other good things like church, food, and most importantly God himself. I know God and am known by God—how can I not rejoice?!
It’s a strange thing—this broken world and the constant, simultaneous feeling of mourning and rejoicing. I think, however, there’s something healthy about this tension—at least until Jesus returns. So, to the person who is always mourning, my prayer for you today is that you would find a way to rejoice. Look to God’s Word and see all that He delights in. I pray that the Lord would restore the joy of your salvation, which may be all you have to rejoice in. And for the person who is always rejoicing but isn’t aware of the surrounding needs, I pray you would learn to mourn with those who mourn. Engage with the world and see the needs more and more like our heavenly Father, whose heart breaks at the sin, death, sickness, and injustice that’s so prevalent. Don’t have pity, instead pray and ask the Lord where you might act.
And I pray for those of us who are constantly feeling this tension that we would know the truth of God’s Word and cling to that Truth as we walk in this tension. Let’s not stay in despair and yet let’s never grow tired of weeping with others.
Today, I understand why we are sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
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