Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.
You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy."
John 16, 20.
In John 16, Jesus is telling his disciples about what is going to happen.
He's preparing them for his crucifixion, and he tells them, you won't see me, but then
you will see me again.
And this is not just about him telling them about his dying and his coming back.
I think it's even greater than that.
What he's saying is, when I come back, you're going to really see me.
You're going to wake up to something.
You're going to become fully aware of who I am and what I have done.
And you're going to know and experience our inseparable union.
And I'm going to be to you what I've always been, but you're going to recognize it.
And in recognizing me, you're going to recognize yourself as a child of God, as a new creation.
But notice, Jesus doesn't skip over the sorrow to get to the joy.
He acknowledges it.
He names it.
He says, you will grieve.
And he sits in the reality of what's coming before he jumps into the promise over it.
That's not weakness.
That's not lacking faith.
That's what it looks like to be fully alive as a whole person.
Emotional health and spiritual maturity are not separate tracks.
A new creation doesn't bypass sorrow to prove that they have enough faith.
A new creation being can sit in the sorrow, honestly, because their identity in Christ
is secure enough to hold it.
You can grieve and still know who you are.
You can feel the weight of something hard and still be seated in heavenly places with
Christ, processing what you feel, getting help when you need it, bringing your whole
self to God.
That's not a detour from your life in Christ.
What is your life in Christ lived out in this world?
As daughters of God, we don't pretend the hard things aren't hard.
We bring them to the Father who already knows and who loves us fully.
And from that place of honesty and union with him, sorrow will turn to joy.
Not because we skipped the sorrow, but because we walked through it with him.