John 16: Grief to Joy

Reading John 16 again, it strikes me that these are voices from another culture, another time and place.  They seem to use a lot of words to get to the point and the language itself is a bit awkward and unfamiliar, but we can’t miss what’s being said:  Jesus was leaving (facing execution) which would bring grief, but because of what would follow, that grief would turn to joy.

When Fletcher, our youngest was born, my wife Sharon had an emergency C-section.  In the hours that followed, Sharon was in terrific pain.  To ease this, her caregivers put her into a deep, drug-induced slumber.  As I sat by her bedside that long night, again and again she would wake briefly and ask two questions – always the same two questions and always in the same order. 

Why? 

We’d been down this road before and I understood that in that one word she was saying something like this: something’s not right, this isn’t what I’ve experienced before.  Why am I in so much pain?  Over and over that night I explained that she’d had an emergency C-section and that was why she was in such pain.  Then would come her second question.

What?

And I knew this single word was asking, what did we have? Is the baby okay?  Again and again I would answer that we’d had a baby boy and that he was healthy and strong.  Then Sharon would return to sleep, only to wake a few minutes later and repeat this conversation.

These same two words capture so much of my conversation with God over the last forty years.  How often I’ve asked, Why?  Something’s not right here.  This isn’t what I’ve experienced before.  Why is this happening to me?  Why am I in so much pain?  And again and again God has reminded me that I live in a broken world among broken people, reminded me that I’m broken too, causing my own pain at times.  Somewhere along the way I learned to ask the second the question as well, the one Jesus encourages us to ask here.  What?  What’s the impossibly good thing that God will bring out of this evil or broken thing, this pain?  How will God redeem this?  Where is the joy hidden in this grief? 

If I listen hard enough, there’s always an answer. 

In this world, Jesus said, you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.

- Paul Abbott