Psalm 30:11 “You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”
Bad things happen in a fallen world. Hope rises from the ruins in a redeemed one.
A friend of mine lost her husband after his long battle with a chronic illness. She and her two teenage girls plummeted into a whirlwind of grief and sorrow at his passing. The healing from their loss progressed painstakingly slow…but progressed it did. Six years later my friend has remarried, she and her girls have relocated, and a whole universe of new opportunities has opened up before them. A God of redemption has caused them to rise from the ruins.
Scripture abounds with stories of people who have overcome devastating loss and found a joy that at one time seemed unreachable. Joseph languished in the loneliness of a dank prison cell before he was elevated as the king’s right-hand man and reunited with his family (Genesis 42). Naomi was so demoralized at the death of her husband and two sons that she told people to change her name to “Mara” which meant “bitter.” (Ruth 1:20). She didn’t know God would use her daughter-in-law to bring about redemption beyond her wildest dreams…a son who would be in the lineage of Christ. A God of redemption caused both Joseph and Naomi to rise from the ruins.
During Jesus’ ministry, lepers escaped lives of isolation and once again felt the touch of another human being. Demoniacs dropped their chains of torment and found sanity. The blind, deaf and crippled exited debilitating worlds of confinement and entered ones of freedom. Dead children experienced the breath of life coursing through their limp bodies once again. A God of redemption caused them to rise from the ruins.
Because that’s what God does. He turns bad into good. Certainly not because we deserve it. If this were a quid pro quo universe we would all be goners. God redeems our situations because he loves us. The God who transformed the darkest of nights into the brightest of mornings at Calvary knows how to turn our mourning into dancing and cause us—no matter what our situation—to rise from the ruins.
Always take hope, friend, that redemption will come.