Living in the Midwest with its notoriously brutal winters, I always look forward to the first hints of spring. Each year, come February, when our temperatures most dip and our sky frequently turns gloomy and gray, I find myself longing for the warmth of the sun, for chirping birds to return, and vibrant flowers to thrive in places the icy months left barren.
The constancy of our seasons reminds me that winter, literal and figurative, won’t last forever. Eventually, today’s hardship will lift. Scripture promises, one day the Lord will turn our tears to laughter, life will swallow death completely, and His light will shatter our world’s long, dark winter for good.
In John 10:10, the Lord stated that He came to give us a thriving, beyond-our-expectations life. He also promised, in numerous places in Scripture, to bring joy from hardship. We recently celebrated Good Friday, which scholars refer to as the darkest moment in history, and I’m reminded of Christ’s words to the disciples, mere hours before His arrest:
“Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy” (John 16:20, NIV).
Some translations read, “Verily, verily,” or “Truly, truly I tell you.” In the original Greek, Christ’s statement begins with “amen amen.” These words, repeated for emphasis, add weight to His declaration. As the late theologian Charles Spurgeon once wrote:
“Our Lord used this ‘Verily, verily' to denote a clear and certain revelation. There must be an end to all doubt when Jesus says, ‘Verily, verily'.”
One could add an exclamation mark at the end of verse 20. It’s as if He said, “Hold tight to this and don’t let your hardship distract from this reality. Your pain won’t last forever. I have so much good planned for you!”
Father, thank You for the gift of spring and the new life we see blooming all around us. More than that, thank You for Your promise to replace the ashes in our lives with beauty, to bring life to our barren places, and to one day turn our grief into celebration. As we walk through this often frightening and difficult world, may we remain alert to, and fully receive, every rainbow breaking through our figurative storms. Help us to recognize and reflect upon every gracious display of Your faithful love, and stir our weary souls to praise.
We praise you for the dew glistening on the lush grass each morning. We praise you for the symphony we hear as crickets, buzzing cicadas, and nightingales join together in song. We praise you for the vibrant sunsets stretching across our spring skies and the silver moonlight that radiates Your faithfulness each night. But mostly, we praise You for who You are, the God who “set all the boundaries of the earth [and] made both summer and winter” (Psalm 74:17, NIV). We know You hold all things in Your powerful yet tender hands and trust You to work all things, today’s difficulties included, for our good. When our circumstances overwhelm us and cause us to temporarily forget these unchanging and irrevocable truths, remind us of Your heart and Your ways. No matter how dark things appear today, we trust You to push back our darkness with Your glorious, life-giving light.
In Jesus’ Name we pray, amen.
One aspect of long, dark winter seasons, literal or figurative, is their tendency to weigh down our hearts with discouragement or defeat. The longer we pray and wait for God’s rescue, the harder it feels to live in a state of joyful, hope-filled anticipation. This is especially true when it seems as if our desperate pleas are met with divine silence. This emotional space creates fertile ground for doubts to form. Doesn’t God hear us? Doesn’t He care? Does He really intend to bring good from my heartache?
Scripture records the anguished prayers of numerous godly individuals who asked those same questions. One example comes from the book of Habakkuk, written by a prophet who lived mere decades before the Babylonians took ancient Israel’s southern kingdom of Judah captive. This was a dark time in the nation’s history when idolatry, oppression, and injustice plagued the land. Habakkuk recognized this, along with the impending threat. But unlike his contemporaries, Jeremiah and Zephaniah, he doesn’t address the people regarding their rebellion and sin. Instead, he directs his message to God, expressing his frustration and anguish for the Lord’s apparent inactivity.
He begins his complaint with these words:
How long, Lord, have I called for help,
And You do not hear?
I cry out to You, “Violence!”
Yet You do not save.
Why do You make me see disaster,
And make me look at destitution?
Yes, devastation and violence are before me;
Strife exists and contention arises.
Therefore the Law is ignored,
And justice is never upheld.
For the wicked surround the righteous;
Therefore justice comes out confused" (Habakkuk 1:1-4, NASB).
Can you see his unspoken accusations? It appears as if he’s implying the Lord is callous, uninvolved, and unjust. At the very least, he’s stating that, in his current situation, he can’t see God’s goodness and attentive care.
In Lamentations, the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah makes similar, if not more direct, claims. Writing after the destruction of Jerusalem and before the captives’ miraculous freedom and return to their land, he declared:
Without pity the Lord has swallowed up
all the dwellings of Jacob;
in his wrath he has torn down
the strongholds of Daughter Judah.
He has brought her kingdom and its princes
down to the ground in dishonor. …
The Lord is like an enemy;
he has swallowed up Israel.
He has swallowed up all her palaces
and destroyed her strongholds.
He has multiplied mourning and lamentation
for Daughter Judah (Lamentations 2:2, 5, NIV).
Then, in chapter 3, he wrote:
He has driven me away and made me walk
in darkness rather than light;
indeed, he has turned his hand against me
again and again, all day long.
He has made my skin and my flesh grow old
and has broken my bones.He has besieged me and surrounded me
with bitterness and hardship.
He has made me dwell in darkness
like those long dead.
He has walled me in so I cannot escape;
he has weighed me down with chains.
Even when I call out or cry for help,
he shuts out my prayer.
He has barred my way with blocks of stone;
he has made my paths crooked.
Like a bear lying in wait,
like a lion in hiding,
he dragged me from the path and mangled me
and left me without help.
He drew his bow
and made me the target for his arrows.
He pierced my heart
with arrows from his quiver.
I became the laughingstock of all my people;
they mock me in song all day long.
He has filled me with bitter herbs
and given me gall to drink.
He has broken my teeth with gravel;
he has trampled me in the dust.
I have been deprived of peace;
I have forgotten what prosperity is.
So I say, “My splendor is gone
and all that I had hoped from the Lord” (NIV).
If you’re familiar with Scripture, you might recall how Jeremiah followed his allegations with a beautiful declaration of God’s lovingkindness, but not until he voiced his unfiltered anguish. These examples and others like them bring comfort when we find ourselves in a similar place. Through them, the Lord invites us to turn to Him in our torment, to express the depth of our emotions, and then to remind ourselves of His unchanging truth.
From my experience, this provides an important guide for how to respond to times of crisis. Often, we want to skip the lamenting and go straight to the truth. Sadly, many of us learned to do this through bad theology that centers exclusively on verses directing us to praise and give thanks during hardship while ignoring passages, such as those found in Lamentations or the Psalms, inviting us to give voice to the most wounded places in our souls.
When we silence or diminish our hurt with forced hallelujahs, we inevitably withhold the deepest parts of ourselves from the One who already knows and understands precisely how we feel and wants to hold us through our crisis. Such bypassing can also lead to self-denial, which, practiced often enough, can cause us to live inauthentically with ourselves.
The Bible encourages us to turn to God in our pain and to wrestle through our doubts and questions with Him. While we might not receive the answers we wish, as a recent Faith Over Fear podcast guest stated, such honest interactions tend to deepen our intimacy with our Father. This often increases the ability to hear Him, as well. In fact, God might use what we term divine silence to awaken our need for Him and tune our ears more acutely to His voice. In those seasons when we feel unseen and ignored, may we pursue God, holding tight to His promise to remain attentive to our every cry.
Lord, thank You for giving us space to vent our fears and heartache. While we might feel uncomfortable with the intensity of our emotions, Scripture assures us that our inner turmoil doesn’t repel You.
You see the battles raging within us, fueled by questions, doubt, and pain. You know when we’re tempted to suppress our emotions behind a Sunday morning hymn. Yet, You seek honesty in our innermost being—because that is where we most experience You. Give us the courage to share everything with you, Lord—our fear, anger, frustrations, and uncertainty. When we feel crushed by despair, may we mimic the father in Mark 9 seeking freedom for his enslaved child and cry, “Lord, help us with our unbelief!” (Mark 9:24).
As the ice of winter melts, spring flowers bloom, and green buds emerge on once barren trees, remind us of Your power to bring new life to those things that appear dead. The passing of one season to the next reminds us that our hard seasons won’t last forever. We trust that good will come, because we trust that You are indeed good. In fact, it is our trust in Your goodness that emboldens us to unveil ourselves completely to You. Comfort us in our pain, bring strength to our weary souls, and, in our sorrow and confusion, speak the truth we most need to hear.
In the Name of Your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ, we pray, amen.
Photo Credit: ©Pixabay/jplenio
Jennifer Slattery is a writer and speaker who co-hosts the Faith Over Fear podcast and, along with a team of 6, the Your Daily Bible Verse podcast. She’s addressed women’s groups, Bible studies, and taught at writers conferences across the nation. She’s the author of Building a Family and numerous other titles and maintains a devotional blog at JenniferSlatteryLivesOutLoud.com.
She’s passionate about helping people experience Christ’s freedom in all areas of their lives. Visit her online to learn more about her speaking or to book her for your next women’s event, and sign up for her free quarterly newsletter HERE and make sure to connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and GodTube.