Joy Comes In The Morning
Claude Monet, Impression Sunrise, 1872
I remember well the long, dark winters in Spokane where we lived for many years. I remember as well such delight on that first morning when the crocus broke through the barren ground. And then the daffodils, oh the daffodils, in all their glory. I’ve always tried to watch for the signs of new life, though winter, bleak and endless, so often keeps us in her clutch.
We hear these days about a sickness sweeping across our land. We hear about a rot that festers at our core. Our hearts break for the people of Buffalo, Uvalde, Ukraine, and so many others. We are drawn perhaps especially to the mothers who have lost their children. When tragedy hits, rumors pop up all over the place, offering political or social solutions. We remain skeptical. We know we need something much deeper.
In my desperate search for new signs of life, I have so much to learn from those people engulfed now in sorrow. In each of these cities and beyond, these people, swept up in sorrow and even rage, make their way into services of worship and prayer. Preposterous, hypocritical, we have been told. These people need more than your prayers, we are scolded. The press barely covers these gatherings of prayer.
And yet, Presiding Bishop Young, at Pearl Young’s funeral in Buffalo, read her favorite Bible verse to a longing congregation: “Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.” Even in the midst of this unspeakable suffering, here is where we will find new signs of life.
Peggy Noonan, in the WSJ this weekend, notices the foundations of faith for the people of Uvalde, Texas. She decides anew things about her own life:
I have been alive for some years and this is the only true thing, that there is a God and he is good and you are here to know him, love him and show your feeling through your work and how you live. That it is the whole mysterious point. And the ridiculous story, the father, the virgin, the husband, the baby—it is all, amazingly, true, and the only true thing.
And then she adds quite meaningfully: We are not talking here about consolations of faith when tragedy strikes, but rather, if these things are true, they provide that essential support everyone needs to go on living. “I am so glad for the people of Uvalde this weekend,” she concludes, “for only one thing, that so many have this. . . .”
Jesus himself stepped into a world raging with hatred and violence:
When Herod realized that the astrologers had tricked him he flew into a rage, and gave orders for the massacre of all the boys aged two years or under, in Bethlehem and throughout the whole district. . . So the words spoken through Jeremiah the prophet were fulfilled: ‘A voice was heard in Rama, sobbing in bitter grief; it was Rachel weeping for her children, and refusing to be comforted, because they were no more.’
Out of a vicious use of power by a madman, we are reminded, down through the centuries, of Rachel weeping for her children. Our urgent question must be: How may we comfort the Rachels who are weeping?
And then I notice how Jesus responded to this weeping?
In very truth I tell you, you will weep and mourn. . . . But though you will be plunged in grief, your grief will be turned to joy. A woman in labour is in pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish in her joy that a child has been born into the world. . . . Ask and you will receive, that your joy may be complete.
I’m in a place in life, having watched our world offer up so many solutions, coming now to focus on this simple gift of Jesus: It is joy. Too simple, we will hear, even unfeeling, hypocritical, too mysterious? I don’t think I’m naïve to the complexity of the issues we face, but I have come to believe our answer rests, quite simply, with this Jesus who brings out of sorrow nothing less than his complete joy.
I need to know more how to go about this. I need to come closer to Jesus every day. I need to learn better how to listen to the cry of those who suffer through the night—because so often it is they who teach us how to trust that joy comes in the morning. I’ve decided I’m going to hold on to this mystery as central to the sorrow of my life, an answer to the weeping Rachels among us, a gift for the sorrow of our world. Joy will blossom in the morning. I believe it.