Joys Are Hidden in Sorrows

Hello faithful family, friends, and followers, we welcome you and thank you again for your presence here and by extension in our lives. We were especially blessed this week when Joy did remarkably well on one of her cognitive apps. It truly thrilled both of us to so see such undeniable progress. We want to thank those of you who faithfully continue to pray for Joy and her very long road of recovery and are excited to share this with you.

I mentioned last week that Joy was branching out beyond just her Bundles of Love creations to some of the sewing projects she had pursued before the accident. During times when she is diligently trying to re-learn, study, and challenge her understanding of things in new/old ways, I often back off on some of our formal “homework.” It would seem Joy’s efforts would be stimulating cognitively, but we hadn’t really known and so I often struggle with how do we balance formal versus informal activities that help Joy in her cognitive challenges. Having seen the result of Joy’s gains in her Tactus app this week, it appeared to answer that question hands down and for that we are both oh so very thankful.

This most recent joy experienced, is an example of one of my/our goals for sharing our life in this blog - to validate in reality, what may often seem idealistic, “pie-in-the-sky,” religiosity, but which in our actual experience has been shown to be true. In our read-through-the-Bible just this week, we came across two passages that speak so clearly to this reality of pain but also joy that can be found in and through such circumstances. Our reading in both Psalms and Joel this week included the following:

May those who sow in tears

reap with shouts of joy.

Those who go out weeping,

bearing the seed for sowing,

shall come home with shouts of joy,

carrying their sheaves. Ps 126:5-6

I will restore to you the years

that the swarming locust has eaten…

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied,

and praise the name of the LORD your God,

who has dealt wondrously with you. Joel 2:25-26

I often quote Henri Nouwen in the context of this pain/joy juxtaposition, but he does such a beautiful job expressing these truths, I will turn to him once again as he writes:

Joys are hidden in sorrows! I know this from my own times of depression. I know it from living with people with mental handicaps. I know it from looking into the eyes of patients, and from being with the poorest of the poor. We keep forgetting this truth and become overwhelmed by our own darkness. We easily lose sight of our joys and speak of our sorrows as the only reality there is. We need to remind each other that the cup of sorrow is also the cup of joy, that precisely what causes us sadness can become the fertile ground for gladness. Indeed, we need to be angels for each other, to give each other strength and consolation. Because only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it.

I fully understand that it can be hard to believe or accept these concepts, so all I can do is to express, to the best of my ability, the reality of a joy, that Joy and I would never have known, would it not have been the path of pain she/we have walked. And, we pray with all our hearts, that if we can be of any kind of encouragement to those who are facing their own dark times of sorrow, pain, and struggle, that we are then doubly blessed through this paradoxical reality.

But blessings from pain, joy from sorrow, are not the only themes that moved us this week in our Bible reading. At a time when violence and acrimony appears to come at us, not only from traditional threats, but now from the very sources called to protect us, we want to encourage and call attention to Christ’s message, especially during this advent season celebrating his arrival in our midst, which the Apostle John expressed so beautifully when he writes:

Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us. 1 Jn 4:7-12

Finally, having also read this week, one of the all-time great benedictions, we leave you with Jude’s parting thoughts from his epistle, which we offer as our prayer and blessing over you all this week and in the weeks ahead:

Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling,

And to present you faultless

Before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy,

To God our Savior,

Who alone is wise,

Be glory and majesty,

Dominion and power,

Both now and forever.

Amen. Jude 1:24-25