Sorrow into singing

We are coming up on the 10th anniversary of my daddy's death on april 3. In so many ways, it seems like yesterday. But one of the things I remember most clearly is that Easter sunday which followed shortly after his death. Needless to say, it was a bittersweet time--a year earlier he had been with us, celebrating the resurrection of our Lord. And a year and a half earlier, we had lost my mom unexpectedly less than 2 weeks before Christmas. We had lost two of the dearest people in the world to all of us a mere 18 months apart--one right before the celebration of Christ's birth and the other right before the celebration of His resurrection from the dead.

Sure, I recall the numbness, the sorrow, the just plain missing so badly the sound of their voice or their laugh. I missed being able to call them on the phone to tell them the latest funny thing one of the children had said or done. I missed their wise perspective. There is just nothing to prepare you for losing your parents. But, I also just as clearly remember the joy of contemplating what wonders they must have been experiencing right at that moment in heaven. While we grieved, they rejoiced. While we wept tears, they laughed with the angels. While we could still only see in part, they could see and understand fully and completely. I wondered if it was as if we still were seeing only in black and white and they were seeing in brilliant, glowing rainbows of colors. I can still recall walking a few nights after mama died and hearing bells pealing and through my tears sensing that she was hearing the joyous pealing of bells in wondrous celebration of finally, truly being home for Christmas. As I have so often shared with others who have lost loved ones, I learned that you can have deep pain in your heart and yet a song in your soul. That Easter after Daddy's death, the resurrection held a whole new joy for me for I knew that because our Saviour lived, my daddy lived too!

I have often thought about this strange yet wonderful paradox. And then the other day as I was reading the classic book, The Incomparable Christ, I saw this very paradox reflected in the life of Christ. Of course, we all know He was both the man of sorrows and the man anointed with joy. But on the night before His crucifixion, right after the Lord Jesus shared the last supper with His disciples, Scripture records that "When they had sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives." (Mt.26:30) I had never noticed that before--that, as Oswald Sanders put it, "The Saviour sang under the very shadow of the cross."

We even know what Jesus and His disciples sang, for at the Feast of Passover all Jews would sing Psalms 115-118, all originally one song known as "The Hallel" (which means "to praise"). One of the verses of that hymn would have been "This is the day that the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." (Ps.118:24) I've always loved this verse and have it displayed in our kitchen as a daily reminder to be present and joyful in each day the Lord gives us, but I'd never before realized it's proper context. This "day that the Lord has made" referred to the day of Jesus' crucifixion. We surely should rejoice in that terrible day for it resulted in our redemption, but how could our Saviour sing these words as He faced the unimaginable agonies of the cross? We cannot even begin to fathom the weight of all the sin, all the wrath of God, poured out upon the perfect One who had never known even a single tiny sin. But in Christ, despite sorrow, joy.

Sanders explains, "But not only did He go to the cross with a song on His lips, but the last words of the song [the Hallel] were words of thanksgiving: 'O give thanks unto the Lord for He is good,' With these words on His lips, and the shadow cast by the Passover moon, He led the little band to the Mount of Olives. What can we learn from the Passover Song? That we can turn our trouble into treasure and our sorrow into song. Faith can sing her song in the darkest hour. Sorrow and singing are not incompatible."

I wept as I read those words, for they were precisely my experience after my parents went home to be with the Lord. Faith had enabled me to sing even in the midst of sorrow. Because the Lord Jesus became incarnate in a crib at Christmas and then gave His life on a cross at Easter, I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my parents are rejoicing in heaven and I will see them again. We truly can declare that the worst satan could devise, death, has lost it's sting, for Christ has given us the victory!

No matter what you are facing, no matter how seemingly hopeless or frightening, know that He who can turn sorrow into singing and trouble into treasure will enable you to sing even in the very shadow of your cross. And after the cross, comes the crown! He has saved the best for last, so don't put away that fork--dessert is coming! And keep on singing. To Him be the glory.