Sorrow
Like a shovel
Digging up the tender earth of my soul
Exposing that which lay hidden
Enlarging my heart

I wonder
Whether joy can create this kind of cavern
An inner space to be filled or emptied
Like a cave full of ocean
Ebbing and flowing
Could happiness ever so expand my heart
As this sorrow? 

I feel it growing
Deepening
Until my chest strains with the pressure
Ready to burst
Forming in me this new emptiness
Then receding, leaving new chambers
Ready to be filled 
With compassion perhaps
Or hope
Or even joy

 

I wrote this poem many years ago. Today, our guest preacher Scott Moore used the same analogy–sorrow as a shovel tilling the ground of our hearts–in his sermon on the Garden of Gethsemane. His point was the same as the one that came to my own soul those years ago: sorrow prepares a space for joy.

“For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right had of the throne of God.” (Hebrews 12:2)   Christ prayed in the garden that the scorn and shame of the cross would be taken away–yet having chosen this path from the foundation of the earth, he also prayed that the Father’s will would be done. He pleaded for another option, but he was resolute in rescuing those he had been born to save. Angels ministered to him, strengthening him for the task at hand–not to flee from suffering, but to enter more fully into it, pressing through to the joy set before him. He endured the suffering because it was the only way for the joy to be made complete.

We suffer. Truth-tellers do not try to soften this reality; the gospel has room for suffering. We live in a broken world, and are broken, sinning and sinned against. We may not always be able to agree on what is sinful, but virtually everyone knows in his or her soul that there is right and wrong, and we long for justice. We long for wrong to be made right, and for the sad things to become untrue.

When we suffer, we may find that we become more compassionate. We find ourselves better able to relate to others who suffer. We may experience God’s very specific comfort which ministers to a specific part of our hearts. We have a renewed perspective on what is important.  We see redemption, and it gives our suffering meaning.

But there is another truth that begins to hint at another role that our suffering plays: “This light, momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18) Pause for a moment. Consider eternity.

I know, I know. Whenever something gets too difficult, some well-meaning old aunt will offer platitudes about the life to come that make you want to tear your hair out. I get it.

But just consider for a moment: our lives, all of this time we spend worrying about this year’s problems, are just the tiniest fragment of the eternal span of our lives. All of the years combined are the shortest imaginable blip. And yet this is a highly significant time for those who are in Christ: it is the only time in eternity that we will suffer. It is the only time we have to trust God in the midst of heartache, to do the hard, deep work of identifying lies that we have believed and turn instead to the truth. This is the only time we have to pray, to bring our troubled hearts before the Lord, to know his goodness in the midst of our pain.

There is a story, and your story and my story are part of it. When the full story is revealed, it will take eternity for us to tell of the wonders, to share all of the details and chapters and characters. It will be beyond what any of us could imagine now. And somehow, in some way, our current suffering is preparing a weighty glory.

And here’s the thing: that weighty glory is breaking through. When we turn to Christ in the midst of our suffering, he draws us in to the quality of life which is the hallmark of eternity. After all, when Jesus prayed for us all before his death and resurrection, he defined eternal life not as a quantity of life, but as a quality of life: “And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3) That is something we can know now. And what makes this little chapter of our story different from the chapters to come is that right now, we can know Christ in the midst of suffering, and watch as he uses it to enlarge our hearts, as he redeems it, and as he fills those newly-made caverns with his joy.