The Weary World Rejoices

I am hard-pressed to think of a more bittersweet day than when my grandfather that I loved so dearly passed away on the morning of my wedding. A bride never expects for her first look with her groom to be so early in the morning, so full of tears, and so full of weariness. There was such weariness that day, yet immense much rejoicing. The man that penned Hebrews touched on taking heart in the weariness of sin, discipline, and the struggle of this world. Do you ever feel or pray, “God, I don’t know what you are teaching me through this hardship, but whatever it is, here I am!”? That’s joy. True joy is acknowledging God is up to something and wanting in on whatever that may be. When you are weary, you can rejoice because in the weariness that comes from the discipline of your life’s sin that persistently frustrates you, He is treating you as a child, an heir to riches beyond comprehension.

There are people in this world that are completely disregarded and forgotten. These are the people God elected to share Jesus’s birth announcement with. If you feel this world has passed you by, do not grow weary because “unto you” He was born. When we see ourselves and others as fellow unworthy coheirs to the great gift God has given us in Jesus, we fix our eyes on a joy that will never be taken from us.

Though the weariness of losing a loved one seems to especially linger during the holiday season, I rejoice in knowing that my grandaddy is now in the great cloud of witnesses that eagerly watches all believers run on in this race. If you are weary from loss, past or present, and you don’t know the Great Comforter that is our God, know that He left Heaven to come to Earth to sympathize with your pain.

Why do bad things happen to good people? The only time a bad thing happened to a good person was when Jesus, totally blameless, came here to be homeless, mocked, tortured, and killed in our places. The psalmist says, “Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting. The LORD builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. He determines the number of the starts; he gives to all of them their names. Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.”