It’s not been an easy few years. No mask can hide it, no needle inoculate us from it. In addition to health woes we’ve had years of political upheaval and rancor, riots in our streets. Inflation is informing us that rumors of its death were greatly exaggerated. We are frazzled and exhausted, and headed right into a season of celebration. How do we sing songs of the Lord when we are in Babylon? Have we not hung our harps on the willows? How do we feast when the locusts destroy our fields?
We believers walk by faith. We are a people who have been redeemed, adopted. We are joint heirs with Christ. We have a great deal to celebrate. His disciples, you remember, unlike John’s disciples, came eating and drinking. Jesus explained that we’re supposed to feast when the bridegroom is with us. He later also told us, “Lo I am with you always.” We have been given life, and life abundant.
That said, we are likewise told in the Bible, wisdom straight from Solomon, that there is a time for everything, and for everything a season. There is a time for fasting, as well as for feasting, a time for dancing and a time for mourning. So how do we know which time is which? We look to those whom we love, those with whom we are united. We are to rejoice with those who rejoice, and to mourn with those who mourn. For the past few days, even as we set the stage for celebrating His incarnation I have been enduring a mild fast of sleeping. I wake up early, and I wake up often. The reason is simple enough. People I love dearly are suffering. People I love are likewise losing sleep, walking through the valley of the shadow of death. I wake, and I pray. I stay awake, and I pray. I wake up again, and I pray. I cry out to the Lord for my loved ones, beseeching the throne of heaven to give them comfort, strength, stamina, and sleep.
We mourn however, not as the worldly who have no hope. Our hope, that which sets apart our mourning from the mourning of others, is grounded in the same reason why we feast. That is, our hope is found precisely in the promise that He is with us. We mourn with hope because He walks with us in the valley of the shadow of death. He is with us. He walks with us in empathy, having taken the form of man, being a man acquainted with sorrow. And He is with us in power. Which is why, in the end, we even feast in our fasting, why we dance in our mourning. Whether we mourn or dance, fast or feast, even when we do both, whatever time it is, it is always the day of our Lord, the day that the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.