Our Sorrows Keep Getting More Sorrowful and Joys Keep Getting More Joyful

Worse and Better

Many years ago, as a young Christian, I listened to some tapes from the All Souls Tape Library of a series of talks by John Stott entitled “Tensions in Christian Experience.” I think one of them was on sorrow and joy. Recently, I have been reflecting on this, and I want to explore with you this thought: It is not just that you become a Christian and your experience is both sorrow and joy (almost as a static tension that is just there in your life); rather, as you grow in age and in grace, the sorrows become more sorrowful and the joys grow deeper. Far from the life of faith, gradually steadying to some calm mid-point between sorrow and joy, the sorrows deepen, and yet are infused with stronger joys. It gets, if I may put it loosely, both worse and better.

I think this may be true in at least four ways. I guess each of them will have been true for Paul.

First, as I grow in grace and simply as I grow older, I walk through more of the shadow of death. The apostle Paul had the sadness of John Mark withdrawing from the missionary team in Pamphylia (Acts 15:38). In his old age, Alexander the coppersmith did him great harm, and he had the misery of watching his former colleague, Demas, deserting him because he had fallen in love with this present world (2 Tim. 4:9, 14). You and I grieve over more and more troubled relationships—perhaps the shadows of a miserable marriage envelop you; the darkness of a crushing sickness or a horrific accident creeps over your soul; the disillusion of someone’s moral failure or scandal saps your energy; the unfathomable horrors of a suicide tie their tentacles around your memories; the sharp pains of being hated without reason bleed your life away. In these and other ways, the shadows of death deepen as you and I walk through more of the valleys of deep darkness.

And yet, as the shadows deepen, the promises of God shine their light ever more brightly. We grow more sure that Jesus really will raise up on the last day every single man, woman, and child whom the Father has given him (John 6:37–39). No darkness can stop him. Satan can lie and murder all he pleases, but Jesus will keep his promise. Precious relationships may be healed. Paul saw John Mark restored to much usefulness (2 Tim. 4:6). Sometimes there is wonderful forgiveness and restoration. But even if there isn’t, Jesus keeps all who are his. The most horrible sickness on earth cannot stop him. There is no accident outside of his providential wisdom and love. Moral failure cannot defeat him. Hatred cannot disable his power or blunt his love. And so even as the shadows fall, the precious assurances of the gospel shine joy into the troubled heart.

Promises Shine Bright Against Shadows

Second, many grieve more deeply than ever with disillusionment over a church, whether their own or others’. The older we grow, the more we have to see of how Babylon has infiltrated Zion. We come up close to the party spirit that drives a wedge through the harmony of a church. We weep as we watch false teaching deal death in a church or denomination. We sorrow as we watch immorality dirtying the purity of Christ’s church. We hear words of harsh self-righteousness in a church. We watch, sorrowful and helpless, as some cause divisions in a church, contrary to the gospel. The older we get, the more we see and feel the sorrows of Christ’s church.

And yet, as these sorrows press in on our souls, the promises shine more brightly. Christ will build his church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail against it. Babylon will be destroyed and Zion will triumph. We see anticipations of this when a church recovers from some needless split; relationships are mended, wrongs are forgiven; harmony is restored. We take comfort when an impenitent church that surrenders to false teaching withers and dies, and when a church nourished by the word of God grows in faith and love. We rejoice as we experience the delights of fellowship in a faithful church. And so, even as disillusion dims the lights of our hearts in a troubled church, the glory of Christ shines ever more brightly.

As the shadows deepen, the promises of God shine their light ever more brightly.

Third and most simply, as we grow older, we know more of death. Just simply death. Full stop. More people we have known die. We go to more funerals. We sit by more loved ones on their deathbeds. We stand more often at the graveside.

And yet again we hear more often the words “I am the resurrection and the life,” as they ring out hope in Christ in the face of the greatest sorrow. The cold of a corpse lies side by side with the warmth of the gospel. We know, as we have never known so deeply, that one day Jesus will raise from the dead each one who is his.

God’s Triumphant Grace

Fourth and perhaps most acute of all, as we grow older, we sorrow more for the darkness of our own sinful hearts. Paul never forgot that he had viciously persecuted the church (e.g., 1 Tim. 1:13). We have more memories of our own moral failures, and even old memories come back to haunt us with their ugliness. We despair more deeply of our own miserable lack of growth in godliness. I say to myself, Have you learned nothing at all in your many years as a follower of Jesus? How can your heart still be so full of self-pity or self-protection, overflowing with covetousness or lust, driven by self-will, or enervated by weariness in doing good? How stubborn are my sins, how resistant to the workings of the Holy Spirit of God! And so I weep for my own sins, and I do so more than I did when I was younger.

And yet again I see more of God’s triumphant grace. I know in experience what I have known in theory for many years, that where sin abounds, grace super-abounds (Rom. 5:15–21). The Holy Spirit pours into my heart the assurance that the Father himself loves me, even me in all my sin and shame (Rom. 5:5). And the love that God has for me from all eternity works in me the stirrings of the steadfastness of Christ (2 Thess. 3:5), so that—to set it at a very basic and unimpressive level—I do not give up. I fail and I weep. But the more I weep for my own sinfulness, the more deeply I rejoice in the beauty, the power, the majesty, the truth, the light, and the love of Jesus Christ.

Perhaps we should not be surprised to be sorrowful, even more and more sorrowful as the years go by. I weep more than I ever did. And yet my tears are soaked through with an ever-deepening joy in Jesus, so that tears of sorrow and tears of joy become inseparably joined. And one day all the tears of sorrow will dissolve into pure and endless joy.

Christopher Ash is the author of Trusting God in the Darkness: A Guide to Understanding the Book of Job.

Related Articles