The Joy Of Jesus Carries Pain

I tend to be a fan of Charlie Hall.  He is one of my favorite worship leaders because not only is his music good and creative, but I mostly like him for his writing.  He always has these little phrases that are so good.  His last album was called “The Bright Sadness.”  I’m not trying to write a review of Charlie or anything, just roll with me.  Anyway, just from the title you can tell something doesn’t seem right.  How can sadness be bright?  Most of the album tends to deal with suffering and sorrow and Jesus being the only brightness to the darkness or the only hope when everything seems hopeless.  I think that’s a huge truth about who Jesus is that is often overlooked.  He is the only thing that exists that is innately good, yet we often look to everything else to find goodness before realizing this, especially when we’re dealing with sorrow.  It seems like something drastic has to happen and we literally have to feel completely helpless and hopeless before we look to Christ to be our everything.  I’ve written several blogs in the past dealing with the issue of suffering, so I’m writing this one assuming you have read those.

One of my favorite lines Charlie writes in a song in that album is “peace is found in troubled days, and the joy of Jesus carries pain.”  Let that sink in a second because there’s a lot in there.  Got it?  Good.  When do we ever look for peace when everything is going great and we don’t need any?  It’s only in trouble do we seek out peace.  Yet when trouble comes, we often get all hot and bothered and start questioning God about why he is letting this happen instead of realizing it’s only by his great grace he is even allowing it to happen, allowing us to experience pain so that we can experience his peace, experience wounds so that we can experience his healing, experiencing want so that we can experience his blessing, experience death so that we can experience life.  It’s hard to like things we don’t understand and can’t control.  It’s then we find our peace in Christ.  And chasing after and experiencing the great joy of Christ, involves pain.  But the joy of Christ far outweighs anything he, in his sovereignty, allows us to go through to find it.