As I was completing my reading this morning.  It hit me that there seem to be 3 G’s of the Christian life before Glory.  They are Grief, Guilt, and Gratitude.  While they appear to be progressive, they are also concurrent.  Said another way, One leads to another but all are always present on this side of glory.

Grief is a curious thing.  It seems we can go through life for a while not really grasping it until we come face to face to the evils of this world, then we can’t remember what it was like before it.  We are constantly affected by it based on our own sin, the sins of others, and the overall fallen state of our world.

Progressive

The grief is a reminder that this is not our home and that we have fallen short of the glory of God.  By its very nature grief leads us to our understanding of guilt before the Father and our need for a Savior.  Our minds don’t like to think about this.  We ask the question: God, isn’t there a better way that only includes Joy?  It prompts me to ask these questions:  Would we really understand our need if this world was too comfortable and didn’t have grief?  Would we have a choice to love if he had not given us free will to sin?  Would we see how great the gift of Christ is if we did not experience our depravity without Him?

Concurrent

After placing your trust in Jesus Christ as your savior, one would hope all the grief would subside because of the joy in Christ.  While Jesus does manifest truth in us that our Joy may be full, the grief still has a place.  As we invest in the lives of others and look at ourselves with honest eyes, we see as Paul did.  There is another law at work in our members waging war against our minds.  We see evil as evil.  We desire that day when every tear is wiped away and then we realize we are not there yet.

So how do we live in such a dichotomy of extreme opposites like grief and joy?  The same way Christ did:  With our eyes fixed on God and our hearts given in complete submission to Him.  May you fix your eyes on Christ today, cast off sin, and run the race that is marked out for you.  Be not ashamed of the Gospel, it is the power of the joy you seek!

#grief, #joy, #jesus