Charlie Hall’s new album “The Bright Sadness” came out in August and I must say it is splendid. It is thoughtful, progressive, prophetic, and fresh. Some of the best Christian art since Sufjan Stevens dropped the Illinoise.
There is one line in the second track called, “New Year” that continues to give me chills.
“The Joy of Jesus carries pain.”
At first hearing the line, my ears and and heart perked up. I was kind of confused and perplexed all at once.
What in the world is He talking about?
The more I listened to the song, God began working on me and I began to interpret it. So here is my take at trying to explain the theology behind a very deep, profound line of a song without preaching you a sermon.
So many times today, Christianity seems to be irrelevant. Many people, maybe you, look at people of the Christian faith and see people that seem to just be in to the whole God thing because they have all their ducks in a row and everything is peachy in life.
You might ask what does this Jesus who died over 2,000 years ago have to do with anything I am going through today? Why would anything said in this old book, the Bible mean anything to me today? It’s just for people who have their whole act together and the just like to have a group of people around them that believe “all the same stuff.”
If you are in this boat, the God of the Christianity is not who you think He is.
The journey of following Jesus extends the entire human experience.
The high. The Low. The Dark. The mountaintop.
I would even venture to say that almost all of the authors of the Bible wrote their portions of it in a position of persecution or assumed hopelessness or defeat.
The culmination of the Bible——Jesus Christ, did not have it any easier. He was betrayed, beaten, and killed by his own people. The writer of the book of Hebrews says,
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”
Jesus, himself did not just acknowledge that we would have trouble in life, He PROMISED IT. He said,
“I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
In this verse, I believe we find a key to living life.
Peace often seems elusive. We often can feel that God is not in the painful times and that God is absent when things get dark.
What the Bible communicates and what Hall is trying to communicate is that the experience of following Him carries all that life could ever throw at us.
Not because we are tough enough to handle it. We can’t do it at all, quite frankly.
But because Jesus has gone before us, and He lives through us…..we can do it.
He took on our punishment and endured the deepest of all pain and through faith in Him we can find true peace.
I used to think that faith in Jesus was forgetting about your problems and focusing on Jesus.
As I live more, I see faith more as having a living trust in God through the junk and darkness and having my real life problems collide with this Truth about God and still claiming that He reigns.
The God of Christianity is big enough BIGGER than anything you can face.
Lean into him in your troubled times.
The Joy of Jesus carries pain.
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Cheers! Sandra. R.