Life is Joy With Tears Just Behind

Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness . . . But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us.

- Henri Nouwen

Jesus Wept

"The Religion-Free Bible paraphrase of the shortest verse of the Bible, “Jesus wept,” captures this: “Anguish climbed from the bottom of his gut up through his chest and throat, and into his eyes with a power that even he could not contain. A lone tear quietly dropped from his eyelash and as it inched down his face, he was now inseparably a part. In the length of his face, the heartache of humankind washed through him like rain. Jesus knew full well the human experience and how it sometimes felt like your heart was being ripped right out of your chest. Life is beautiful. But life was also agonizing. That was the deal, and there was nothing Jesus could ever do to change that. Gravity had its way with this solitary tear and as it fell from his chin to the ground, Jesus was undone with sadness and compassion that seemed to stretch across every wound and scar that had ever been suffered. No divinity could save him now from his own human heart. Jesus wept.”

(Jim Palmer. Notes From Over The Edge)

Pain or Christians Who Convince Us God Us Not That Good

publication of “A Grief Observed,” which Lewis wrote after his wife’s death. God’s megaphone didn’t just rouse Lewis, it nearly shattered him. In writing about his bereavement, Lewis described what it was like to go to God “when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.” He added: “Not that I am (I think) in much danger of ceasing to believe in God. The real danger is of coming to believe such dreadful things about Him. The conclusion I dread is not ‘So there’s no God after all,’ but ‘So this is what God’s really like. Deceive yourself no longer.’ ”

There is also, for me at least, consolation in the conviction that we are part of an unfolding drama with a purpose. At any particular moment in time I may not have a clue as to what that precise purpose is, but I believe, as a matter of faith, that the story has an author, that difficult chapters need not be defining chapters and that even the broken areas of our lives can be redeemed."

(After Great Pain, Where Is God? Peter Wehner)

Different Silences....?

"There are all kinds of silences and each of them means a different thing. There is the silence that comes with morning in a forest, and this is different from the silence of a sleeping city. There is silence after a rainstorm, and before a rainstorm, and these are not the same. There is the silence of emptiness, the silence of fear, the silence of doubt....
This kind of silence can speak. Its voice may be melancholy, but it is not always so... Whatever the mood or the circumstance, the essence of its quality may linger in the silence that follows."
(Beryl Markham, West with the Night)

Where You Are Brought To Tears

“Be aware of the place where you are brought to tears. That’s where I am, and that’s where your treasure is.”
(The Alchemist. Paulo Coelho)