Sorrow – what does it really mean? What does it convey? Let me ponder on these questions for a while. Every minute I live, I try to live for His name – Why sorrow then? Everything I do, I do it that He may be glorified – why trials then? Every step I take, I strive forward for Him – why tears then? Do these questions strike a chord in your Heart, my reader? These are not just my questions, are they? Doesn’t your Heart also cry these questions out every so often? So, let’s try to look through the fog and get a grasp on what sorrow really is.
Why do we face sorrow as Christians? Isn’t Joy the main part of my Christian life? Let me tell you, however confounded you may get by what I say, I believe sorrow is that flicker in the dark, that stops us in our tracks, shows us how badly we have strayed from the path and guides us back to it. It is that expression of the human heart that brings us back to reality when we are letdown by the coziness of our dreams. Let me try and say a few coherent words about this seemingly incoherent part of your life and mine.
Sorrow is meaningful. Yes, it is. Anyone who’s been through pain, suffering, hurt and sorrow will tell you how meaningful it has been in their lives. It enlightens you about all your mistakes that you have committed knowingly and unknowingly – and points you to the Truth, however painful it may be. To talk about sorrow without pain can be likened to writing prose without language. They are inseparable twins, for they go hand in hand. The pain that one experience may hurt the person, but at the same time, it also teaches them lessons that the world cannot. G. K. Chesterton once said that meaninglessness ultimately comes not from being weary of pain but from being weary of pleasure. Is that not why we see so much meaninglessness in a world which is overflowing with pleasure? Sorrow, if nothing more, brings more meaning to life than anything else.
Sorrow has a purpose. The Lord God who created us in His own precious image, who sent His own to die for us so that we may live, who unceasingly pursues our faithless selves with His faithful love, allows sorrow in our lives for a purpose. And what is the purpose, you ask me? I’d say to remind, to rebuke, to chasten and to teach. Anything that happens in your life and mine is not an accident. I do not believe in accidents – It is an illusionary word for me. Anything that happens in our lives has to pass through the heavenly courts first and then be allowed. So even sorrow has to be divinely acknowledged and permitted before it reaches us. I believe that it is the tie that binds our wandering heart to Him, so that we would not stray so far as to be lost; it is that muzzle that makes us focus on the riveting sight of the Cross. Can you imagine the agony and sorrow of King David who was called a man after My own Heart by God, when he wrote Psalm 51? Or is it a great surprise to learn that Psalm 51 is the most preached upon Psalm? Yes, sorrow has a purpose.
Pain and hurt reminds us of Love. It’s ironic to see that it takes us pain to remind us of Love. And when it pains, we run to the everlasting arms of Love. Therein is Love, standing tall, with its arms wide open, waiting for us to run into them. It is that same Love that trudged the lonely road to Calvary, took the brunt of our punishment and flung it’s arms open for us. So what does pain do? It prods you onto Love. It reminds us that all the pleasure we see here on Earth is passing and points us to the only unchanging constant – God Himself. So, my dear friend, if you in your pain, cry out, “Where are you, God?“, believe me, He has never been more closer to you. For in that very sorrow He allows in your Life, He shows His undying Love for you. Is that not what Jesus affirmed in the Sermon on the Mount when He said “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted“? Yes, we shall be comforted by Love – not the love that the world offers, but by the Love that unconditionally gave itself for us.
I would like to conclude this with a remarkable comment Ravi Zacharias, the prominent Christian apologist, makes in one of his messages. Is there any verse in any one of the Gospels that tells us Jesus laughed? Yes, He was called the Man of sorrows but is that all there is to Him? Ravi goes on to explain the mystery. Joy, he says, is the fundamental core of the Christian and sorrow is his peripheral expression. For the skeptic, it is the other way around. Joy is peripheral and sorrow is fundamental in his life. Is this not what the Cross, the fulcrum of the glorious Gospel we possess, the only hope of mankind signifies? Has Divine Will have been more perfectly accomplished than the moment when Christ cried out “It is finished!” in agony and gave up His life? The great English Author, G K Chesterton makes this startling observation, as he concludes one of his best literary efforts, Orthodoxy. He says the following:
“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth”
The Joy of God that was so suggestively hidden from men when He walked on Earth will be unleashed one day. I believe that when we end this pilgrimage and return back to our Home, the same Joy that was hidden will resound uninhibited and we will thrive in it. So you who are cast down and trampled upon, rejoice in Him! You whose heart is shedding tears, jump for Joy! You who are used and exploited by the world, thank Him for being considered worthy to suffer shame and you who are looked down upon, lift your eyes up and gaze at His beauty. For what ultimately is going to transform you and me into His blessed image is not our slumber on a bed of roses, but rather our walk of Faith through the valley of Death. I write these words with my heart burdened with sorrow, with my eyes shedding their tears, with my hands trembling and with His song on my lips. I wish to leave you with these eternal words Paul wrote two thousand years ago:
“Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us” – Romans 5 : 3-5
