Sing Joy About Grief

There are so many paradoxes in life.

If you know me then you know I love to define things by their opposites. I find it truly helps me to see what something is - simply by seeing what it really isn’t.

G.K. Chesterton says that you don’t know what you want to say until you know what you don’t. I agree.

You don’t know war ‘till you’ve seen the absence of peace. Joy is magnified when in the midst of great grief. You don’t despise pride ‘till you’ve seen love’s purest act. Sun and shadow. Hope and despair.

Yet oftentimes these things are so blended and combined that there isn’t so much of a definition, but a lot of muddy opinion. Some man's joy is another man’s grief.

Mix Red, Blue, and Green light together and you get brilliant white light. Do the same with paint and you might as well have thrown up your dinner with the black gruel that you will have made.

So even absolutes and conclusion can be a matter of opinion.

Enough poor philosophy though. What I’m trying to get to is a dissecting of my last post's statement: God is good.

Three big words.

Firstly “God”: Here I’m referring to the Christian God. Whom men can come to through Jesus, and His act of pure love on the cross.

Secondly “Is”: This is a verb. Probably one of the most complex and fundamental of all verbs. But you know what it means and how it’s used so I’m not even gonna explain.

Thirdly we have “Good”: Hmmmmmm. Well that certainly depends.

I personally think good is often a terrifying thing. Just wretchedly terrifying and beyond understanding.

So many things done in the name of good intentions have been, in fact, very bad things.

And some bad things, have brought about such good.

My Dad and I went for a drink tonight and he recalled a story about his father. During the Second World War my grandfather, a soldier, was at some point “thrown in the slammer” (he had done something bad) and was transferred to another regiment. His former regiment went on to D-Day - while he didn’t.

It became clear that if he had never done that “bad thing” we might not have been there having a drink.

A startling realization.

So saying God is good may not look like what we think.

Banana bread is good but so is chemotherapy.

Have fun is good but so is punishment.

Redemption is good. Yet only through the scourging, the separating, and the slaughter of Jesus. None of those are good things, but it certainly was the best thing ever.

I’ve had to make many hard decisions in my life, just like us all (some more than others), that are very much for the best, but are often-times (such as it is for most of life’s biggest decisions) wretchedly terrible.

I remember a scene from the movie “Master and Commander” (about a British warship trying to find and destroy a French warship during the Napoleonic Wars) where a young boy suffers an infectious injury to his arm (whilst doing his good duty) and they have to amputate (and in a time before pain-killers!). The boy goes ahead with the amputation willingly and quietly because it’s a good thing. He lived.

Sometimes we have to cut off things we love to continue to enjoy other things that we love. Like an arm for life.

Now God is good right? So we can find a supreme and infinite joy and goodness by coming to Him and loving Him and living through and in Him. The problem is that we are not good, and therefore we all too often have to make the painful decision of cutting things off that are dimming, or tainting, or killing that God given goodness.

The thing to cut off is the infection. Your life. And come to Jesus, Who has great goodness to restore you with.

This is a one-time thing but also a process. A continual surgery that ends with the gaining of life.

So when we’re told “things will work out for good” (usually in the midst of great pain) we can be assured that with God, Who is good, first in our lives that the working out of good is true. We have salvation.

Like a sliver, it just has to be worked out.

So accept Jesus, Who accepts all who come to Him in spirit and truth, and sing joy about grief.

‘Cause it’s all just a while ‘till it’s all worked out for good. In Jesus’ name.