There is a grief, a wound raw and bleeding. An ache for which there are no words. A moment that will mark you forever.
Lost! Lost! All is lost! it cries and it feels as though it must always be so. That is a lie. Do not agree with it. Do not allow it to take up residence in your mind, in your heart. You are not lost. You are not beyond reach or rescue.
But where has hope gone?
It’s been buried under the avalanche. May it be planted, take root in the unseen darkness and burst forth one day with sudden and surprising joy. One day may you find that the winter is past and the spring has come. Your ashes are beautiful. Your lament is a praise-song. All things have been made new – including you.
Our present troubles are quite small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us an immeasurably great glory that will last forever! So we don’t look at the troubles we can see right now; rather, we look forward to what we have not yet seen. For the troubles we see will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever. 2 Corinthians 4:17-18
This trouble is short-lived, fleeting, temporary. It will not last forever. (Yes! It’s true!!) And it’s doing something behind the veil of your tears, something indescribable. This thing that has torn your world apart is actually working underneath the surface producing, forming, creating. The fruit is immeasurably great glory.
And not just any old glory, but a glory that will not end. An eternal weight, exceedingly abundantly more, beyond comparison to anything we can imagine. It may be hard to believe now, but you do not know yet the happiness of which you are capable.
The joys to come, the happiness we can’t imagine, are never going to end. They’re ours forever, kept for us, “pure and undefiled, beyond the reach of change and decay” (1 Peter 1:4). It’s a treasure that can’t be stolen (Matthew 6:20). It’s far more valuable than mere gold or gems. Better than fertile farmland or a thousand head of cattle. Better. More. Not without worth but beyond price. It’s the salvation of your soul (1 Peter 1:9).
It’s abrasion that polishes gemstones. It’s pressure that creates diamonds. It’s fire that purifies gold. The oyster bathes its wound layer after layer until it produces a pearl. Oh if only we could see what great treasures He is making of us as we sit in the darkness!
Sometimes the path to where we’ve always wanted to be leads directly through the place we never wanted to go. We travel through the desert, the wilderness, the darkest valleys before finally meeting God at the mountain of desolation. All of it – yes, all of it – is creating something incomprehensibly more than we can imagine.