Joy Comes in the Morning

Psalm 30:5 (CEB)

His anger lasts for only a second,but his favor lasts a lifetime.Weeping may stay all night,but by morning, joy!

Twice now I have taken part in the funeral of one of my children.

Barry, our oldest son, passed away more than eight years ago. Hannah, our oldest daughter, passed away only nine months ago.

Each of those losses shocked me to my core. I found myself asking, How will I ever get through this?

It turns out that is a common question when we face grief. We ask it after the death of someone we love, but also after the loss of a job, a devastating diagnosis, a miscarriage, or any loss that divides life into before and after. The question is so common that grief researcher Lucy Hone used it as the title of a book about living with and through grief.

Psalm 30 gives us the image of a long, dark night: “Weeping may stay all night.”

When you are in the middle of that night, it can feel as though morning will never come. Grief has a way of convincing us that this is simply what life will feel like from now on.

But the psalm doesn't deny the weeping. It doesn't tell us to cheer up or get over it. It simply reminds us that the night is not the whole story.

“By morning, joy!”

Morning doesn't erase what happened during the night. I would give anything to have my children back. That ache does not disappear because the sun comes up.

And yet, somehow, the sun does come up.