song of joy

I was feeling emptied and dragging by the end of the day. Books, papers, dirt, laundry, dishes and legos seem to be everywhere. Bedtime was tedious, and everyone wanted one more book, more light, less light, different jammies, a drink of water, and Jack told me he took issue with the very existence of night: couldn’t we do something to make it never happen again? I wanted all these exhausted children asleep.

I began a blog. It was about motherhood, and how hard it is to do it well. (I don’t think it should be difficult to deduce where the theme came from.)

And then I checked twitter and there it was. A family was facing great tragedy. It was all happening right then, as I was writing. Every word of my blog no longer had any meaning. Instead I was stuck on the thought of what was happening right then a thousand miles away.

How do you go to bed when this was the last day you saw your child alive?

And then it hit me. Perspective. And shame. Why must it take someone else’s tragedy to remind me that empty is actually something I have never experienced? My life has yet to take that type of unexpected turn. God has not asked me to walk the hard road of loss like that.

And yet He could. Tonight could be the night sorrow rests itself in our home. 1 Corinthians 2:9 says, “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him”. Matthew 5:25 says God “causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”. We are given no assurance of an easy life in the scriptures.

How do you go to bed when you know this life is so very, very fragile?

And yet, there is a holy sound beginning in my soul…

“And the ransomed of the LORD will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion, with everlasting joy upon their heads. They will find gladness and joy, And sorrow and sighing will flee away.” Isaiah 51:11

This is where Christianity trumps so many other religions. Our life is not our end. Suffering is not punishment, or insignificant. Our God, our one true God has an eternal plan of peace. He is an all-good God with a glorious plan to rescue us from this world that so easily falls short. His own suffering has brought us back to Him.

And the song is resounding fully from the deepest places in my heart:

“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost, but now I’m found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Yea, when this life and heart shall fail,
And mortal life shall cease,
I shall possess within the veil,
A life of joy and peace.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,
Bright shining as the the sun,
We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise
Than when we’d first begun.”

My song will fill the emptiness between today and forever, and I will walk the road that leads me closer to Him.

Amen.