Psalm 30:11-12 “You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing to you and not be silent. Oh Lord my God, I will give you thanks forever.”
In last week’s column I talked about learning to sit with the pain - to trust the Lord, to cling for dear life while the “tsunami storm” beats over you repeatedly. It is a time of great distress and discomfort, where we offer it up as a sacrifice to God, look for His lessons, and wait. With His help, we survive – even when we’d rather just give it up altogether.
Ecclesiastes 3:1 tells us that “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…” and goes on to tell us in verse 4 that there is “a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance.”
We must be careful not to let our mourning swallow us up alive. Even through the darkness, the eyes weary from weeping, the heart tired of beating, we need to pray for strength to look up for that glimmer of hope for the time when the mourning ends. He promises to turn it into a time of dancing, and laughter. In Psalm 30:11 the word for laughter is transliterated as joy, mirth, gladness. The joy is the exceeding joy of God.
This isn’t some glib little band-aid casually offered when we’re in the middle of heart surgery – this is a promise from God Himself that you can cling to in the middle of the storm, that someday - maybe not today or tomorrow - but some day there will again be a time for joy in your life. Maybe right now that seems hard to believe, but that’s where faith comes in. Just hold tight, one more hour, and each day God will give us Himself and won’t leave us. And each day, we are one step closer to healing, to breathing, to living again.
So take heart – the night is over, and it is time – get up and laugh, get up and dance. Breathe deep, it is time to celebrate once again this gift called life, and allow God to restore us to exceeding joy. Praise His Name!