Sorrow and Joy. 2 Cor. 7.2-16

Sorrow and Joy. (drawn from 2 Corinthians 7.2-16)

An auburn-haired lad set out to make his way down the street to his grandmother’s house. He carried a little plastic boat in his hand, ready to set it afloat on the stream that flows along the back of her property.

“Hello, Grandma, come and watch my new boat!” He grabbed the old woman’s hand and drew her outside.

“Now, Grandma, you stand here,” (and he positioned her along the bank),

“and I am going to go up there and put my Chris Craft in the water….okay? You grab it when it starts to go by you, okay, Grandma?” he looked expectantly into her eyes.

The old woman did not want to disappoint Jacob, so she said, “Okay, Honey, Grandma will try her best.”

He ran up the embankment a little way, and then gingerly placed the little wood-colored boat in the water.

As Grandma watched, the boat went up and down, always moving with the current. “Up and then down,” she thought. “Up and then down…a lot like life! Always moving, but sometimes, life has its ups, and everything feels right. Sometimes, life knocks us down, and then….well, it just isn’t so easy.”

Life has its ups . . . life has its tough times—

“But God, who encourages those who are discouraged,

encouraged us,” Paul wrote, in 2 Corinthians 7.

In times of sorrow . . . God. ‘See, you do not really know that God is all you need until God is all you have. When other things have been stripped away…well, you will still find God. When others have walked away, God never abandons you. When life does not make sense, and the pain is more than you can bear…God.

Like . . . When Sandy lost her beloved daughter to foul play, the only One she knew she could turn to…the only One who might meet her at her place of unimaginable agony was God. So, she turned to him, and he was there.

When her son suffered abuse at the hands of a youth leader, God was the only one who could soothe Jackie’s raging heart and mind.

The apostle Paul makes sense of life’s greatest pains when he says there is a kind of sorrow that turns folks to God. Have you ever been there, Friend? When your heart is sure to break apart from the pain that it feels?? Only God can hold all of your sorrow—only God can bear your pain. He knows your heart and he knows that which you face—no need to explain to him.

Within the text, Paul references another kind of pain—that which is born of conviction, that which is birthed from our sin or wrong-doing. It is then we can ‘come clean’ with God; we can confess our sin, turn away from it, and get right with God. Always, God offers another chance. Ask King David. He was driven to a holy sorrow, knowing how he had grieved the heart of God with his adulterous sin with Bath-sheba.

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love,” penned the song-writer in Psalm 51. “Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin . . . Create in me a pure heart, O God . . . restore to me the joy of my salvation,” David cried. From the sorrow of his own transgression to the joy of being forgiven.

(For the whole passage, 2 Corinthians 7.2-16, click on the next line, please)

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/index.php?search=2%20Corinthians%207.2-16&version=NIV&interface=print

Like the lad’s little boat being pulled along by the current, riding ripples up and then down, so too, are our lives. Whether in joy or in sorrow, it is your Father who holds all in the palm of his hand. Look to him, run to him . . . he is big enough, he is able, and he loves you so.

Christine