joy: the real thing

This morning I was thinking about part of Psalm 30:5, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning."

I have always associated this verse with weeping over someone's sickness, and associated the joy that comes in the morning with a restoration of health. So in my mind a paraphrase would've been something like "you may cry over God's seeming silence for a season, but in the next season He will surely bring you what you ask and make sure you have everything you want to be happy."

But this morning my little paraphrase just wasn't ringing true.

Maybe it had something to do with James 1:2-4:

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.

Or with Romans 5:1-5:

Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

We are not guaranteed the fulfillment of our requests in prayer.

We are guaranteed suffering.

But we are also guaranteed joy.

This means that the fulfillment of our requests and joy must be two separate things. Joy must be something that can exist side-by-side with suffering. Joy WILL come in the morning. But what will it look like?

The first answer that cropped up in my mind was from Psalm 16:11, "in Your presence is fullness of joy; at Your right hand are pleasures forevermore."

He alone is our guarantee of joy. I can watch my loved one's sickness go from bad to worse, and still see joy in the morning -- if I am in His presence.

What a weighty miracle this is.

John Piper describes it one way in Desiring God:

In conversion we find the hidden Treasure of the kingdom of God. We venture all on it. And year after year in the struggles of life, we prove the value of the treasure again and again, and we discover depths of riches we had never known. And so the joy of faith grows. When Christ calls us to a new act of obedience that will cost us some temporal pleasure, we call to mind the surpassing value of following Him, and by faith in His proven worth, we forsake the worldly pleasure. The result? More joy! More faith! Deeper than before. And so we go on from joy to joy and faith to faith.

(Multnomah: 2003, p. 74)