Two Sides of a Fence: Joy and Sorrow in the Psalms

On my way to work this morning, I was listening to the song, “I Can Only Imagine.”  My mom passed away last year and as I listened, I reflected on the beautiful movie depicting how this song came to be.  Next my thoughts slid over to the moment my mom first met Jesus.  In that second,  I realized her first moment after her death was vastly different from mine.

The moment she passed away, I fell to my knees at her lifeless body with my head in her lap sobbing tears of sorrow.  My screams of heartbreak ripped through the room.

At that very same moment, my mom fell to her knees with her head in Jesus’ lap crying tears of joy and singing songs of worship and praise.

I was in disbelief at my loss.

She bathed in relief at her gain.

I was devastated and broken.

She was with the Divine and made new.

Isn’t that the way with our world?  The viewpoint we see is so strikingly different than Jesus’.  If we could glimpse for a microsecond on how Jesus views us, I believe every heart would transform right then and there.  Where we see darkness and despair, He sees light and eternity.

That is why we have faith.  We have faith in His promises, His great love for us, and His claim that He is the Divine Lord and Savior who will wipe away every tear.  Our hurts will not last forever.

Psalm 6:2-3 describes what I felt the moment my mom died:

Have mercy on me, Lord, for I am faint;
heal me, Lord, for my bones are in agony.
My soul is in deep anguish.
How long, Lord, how long?

Psalm 8:1-2 describes what my mom must have felt:

Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory
in the heavens.

My mom’s world and my world are very different now, and it began the second she stopped breathing in the air of this earth and drank in the sight of her Lord.

We straddle two sides of a fence between anguish and joy, pain and praise, and fear and faith.  Whichever side of the fence we choose to spend our time will determine if we are seeing life with our own eyes or through the eyes of God.

While we are still walking this earth, breathing its air, and watching what we do to each other on the nightly news, we can still cry out to the Lord for His generous mercies and praise His majestic name.

That is what it means to be human, and that is what it means to be His.

Photo by Janick Kern on Unsplash