Joy, Fear, Faith, Suffering and the Kingdom of God
By George “Chip” Hammond
Three winters, two years, close to one million deaths: that is what we’ve experienced. It’s been hard. It’s been hard on the one in 130 families who have lost an immediate family member to Covid. It has been hard on all of us emotionally, psychologically, and financially. The new year began with a new variant of the virus. I knew no one personally who died in the Delta wave. I know four people personally who died in the Omicron wave.
When will life get better?
But February was better. Infection rates were falling precipitously. That had happened last spring but this time was different. A vaccine highly effective at preventing serious illness and death was developed and widely distributed. More people were exposed to the virus and those who survived stored genetic code that made it easier for their bodies to deal with the virus the next time they encountered it. More and more studies were done globally, and as real data came in, medical researchers vectored in on effective treatments. Epidemiologists were cautiously optimistic that the pandemic was transitioning to endemicity. Things were looking up. Then Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine without provocation, threatening nuclear devastation on any nation that dared come to their aid.
At the start of the Modern Age (twentieth century), the motto was “in every day and in every way, mankind is getting better and better.” The guns of World War I silenced that. We want to allow ourselves to hope that this time the world is interconnected enough through commerce, trade, and information that we really will get better and better. But every time we allow ourselves that hope, a madman arises somewhere to remind us that the fallenness of humanity requires something more than human effort and well-wishing to overcome the fallenness of humanity.
Three winters, two years, and close to one million deaths. Profoundly sad, but things were looking brighter. Joy was on the horizon – only to be dashed to bits by a megalomaniac with imperial aspirations. We want to have joy, but how can we when the world is like it is? When will we get a break? When will heartache, fear, and suffering end and unalloyed joy come? The answer for generations prior to ours is “never in our lifetime.” And unless the Everlasting Joy returns in our lifetime it will be the same for us.
Joy in sorrow
How can we enjoy family, friends, restaurants, weddings, parties, gatherings, music, art, education, worship, love-making, and feasting when people in a country not very much unlike our own are having their most beautiful edifices destroyed, their soldiers and citizens killed, their population fleeing for refuge, and our missions and churches threatened, attacked, and overwhelmed?
Romans 12:15 tells us to “Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.” During the years I’ve been in the ministry I’ve struggled with how to do so. In any given week one person or family may suffer a devastating tragedy, and another may experience an unbelievable blessing. Should I be weeping, or rejoicing?
For all of us at this moment, life seemed poised on the verge of returning to a greater semblance of normalcy than it had since the novel Coronavirus emerged. Now friends and missionaries in Ukraine are threatened by invasion, and the world is threatened with nuclear holocaust. Should we be rejoicing or weeping?
In 1939, shortly after England entered World War II to fight against the imperialistic madman across the channel, C.S. Lewis delivered a lay sermon entitled “Learning in Wartime.” The sermon was in answer to a question posed at Somerville College, Oxford, whether “it was advisable, in light of the current crisis, to continue university education.” Lewis notes that the question is not really whether there should be learning in wartime, but whether there should be learning any time, for the world will always be full of crises. If crisis must be absent in order to pursue anything constructive rather than attending to the immediate emergency, then there can never be learning. Lewis says we must do both. In the place of “excitement” he urges self-control, in the place of frustration, he prescribes faith, and for fear he recommends sobriety. Favorable conditions for learning will never come. No one’s task will ever be done (see Ecclesiastes 1:8). Death is inevitable, and we must entrust the future to God and do the part he’s called us to do now.
Empathy in joy and sorrow
The same may be said for every endeavor of life. We must learn to rejoice and weep at the same time. We must learn from the Man of Sorrows (Isaiah 53:3) how to live out “the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). We cannot perhaps do both at the same time, but when we speak with people who are weeping; we can enter into their suffering and weep with them. When we speak to those who are rejoicing, we can enter into their joy and rejoice with them.
The current world situation is concerning and anxiety provoking, and we must weep with those who weep. But we must not only weep. We must love, and laugh, and hug, and hold and share Jesus and rejoice in all the goodness God provides, even in the midst of it. We must enjoy all the good that God gives us and do all the good we can for those who are suffering.
The world has been subject to vanity (Romans 8:20; see Ecclesiastes 1:1). There is no human solution for it. The solution has been provided for us, and is on the way, but we cannot command it, rush it, or hinder it. What we can do is be obedient and faithful, and that includes being joyful in the midst of suffering (Romans 12:12). For “There is nothing better for a person than to eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25)
