The truth about sadness — Psalms 73:26
Psalms 73:26 (ESV) My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.
I have been reading this book entitled, “In Weeping & Rejoicing: Emotions in Theology & Life” by Paige Stitt McBride, and truly it has been so helpful in helping me build sound doctrine over emotions in the feelings-led society. It has cut through the idolatry of feelings and still managed to be gentle in its honest and truthful discussion of them. Each chapter talks about a few things: the biblical understanding of these emotions, how they are defined, how they are distorted, and how we develop them in a health way. Emotions range from joy, sadness, fear, anger, shame, peace, and love. I highly recommend it if you’ve ever been battling your emotions in any way. This book examines everything from a spiritual and biological perspective which I find very helpful because the two always felt like they had to be enemies, on opposing sides. Again, a powerful resource for any book club, small group, or staff.
Anyway.
The Lord is sweet in meeting us where we need at just the right time. I began the chapter on sadness right when my dad was taken to the hospital and toughed out a 2 week stay in the ICU. This year we learned that he has stage 4 colon cancer so we’ve been praying and walking through a certain sorrow ourselves. For so long, I identified certain emotions as “bad” just because they felt bad. I believed the lie that if you truly have faith in an Almighty Good God that you would not be sad because you knew that everything worked out for the good of those who loved him and He always had good plans. Thankfully the Lord has been destroying that lie for a while. The books reminds me of this truth.
Paige writes, “At Calvary, we confront both utter injustice and love itself. We encounter the evil of the world and the goodness of God. Therefore, we both weep and rejoice at the cross.”
Sorrow and joy exist in tandem. In the greatest and most beautiful moment that ever occurred, there was sorrow and great joy. Death and Life.
What really shook me was this:
Isaiah 53:3 (ESV) “He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Jesus. My beloved was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. My friend knew grief too, knew pain too, knew bone aching sorrow that shakes you all over. He knew it enough for them to reference that as apart of him. Our Jesus who died on the cross, who felt the most sorrow any one on earth ever felt. Who encountered the ultimate suffering in death. My God.
All of a sudden, sadness didn’t seem like a place of shame or deficiency. My friend was in this too. He felt it too. He knew. He wasn’t just outside of it patting my back till I got up again. He was in it with me. He sat beside me. He knew sorrow well.
Jesus has always been with me. He has been reminding me of this everyday for years. Years filled with their own suffering. He was beside me in it.
He’s with you too.
His word reminds us that nothing can separate us from him, not height nor depth, not angel nor demon, or principality or power, not things present or things to come, nor life nor death, nor anything else in all creation, can ever separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:38-39).
So when you are sad, and don’t have the strength. He will give you strength. The verse I have listed at the top was something that McBride led me too that encouraged me for whatever is next. When we slip and fall, doubt and crumble, He will give you strength.
Rely on him child, rely on him.
