Transforming Mourning into Joy

Transforming Mourning into Joy UV 522/10,000 Jeremiah 31 v 13 “ Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them,and make them rejoice from their sorrow” The human mind is such a cocktail of emotions, the human body such a mix of hormones that unless the Lord anchors our lives, we are driven like driftwood in different directions. God is not a joy killer. Rather, He desires that young and old both rejoice. He promises to turn or transform our mourning into joy. Mourning is a type of extreme sorrow. Joy is a type of extreme delight. He promises to comfort us and give us reason for rejoicing. The enemy of our souls, Satan attempts to distract us with anxiety, worry and sorrows. He attempts to thwart the will of God by causing us to focus on the negatives in our lives. David used dance as an act of worship. He rejoiced in the presence of God. People including his own wife Michel thought he was intoxicated but he was only intoxicated and saturated with the joy of the Lord. He apparently thought this was the only appropriate way to express his delight at the extraordinary victory the Lord had given him. Virtually, every day in the privacy of my dressing room, I indulge in something I call Freestyle Aerobic Dancing, gyrating to music in gay abandon to express my joy at the extraordinary victory the Lord has given me in many death-like situations. We have two types of rejoicing: one, where we have many positive blessings in our lives. Second, we need to rejoice that the Lord gave us relief in pain, healing in disease, comfort in sorrow, solutions to problems, assistance to face challenges, protection from persecutors, adversaries and rivals, timely help in trouble. He is with us in all types of circumstances. He transforms our circumstances. He tests our heart-attitude in different sets or combinations of circumstances. The joy of the Lord is our strength in good times and bad times, in prosperity and adversity, in good health and sickness, in success and failure, in friendship and enmity. The joy of the Lord means that when we live in such a way that the Lord rejoices in us, we too would be joyful and strong. In the absence of God in our lives, our joy will be turned into mourning. All of mankind and all through history have been seeking happiness in a variety of temporal ways. But, the more man seeks happiness, the more it recedes into the distance like a mirage in the desert. But, scripture says that happy is the person whose God is the Lord. We need not ignore the causes or sources of our sorrow. But, we need to thank God in advance and expect Him to turn that specific source of sorrow into a source of joy. The ground that is watered with many tears mixed with prayer and faith yields lots of laughter in the days to come. Prateep V Philip