20 Aug Your Woeful and Wonderful Life
John 12:27-28 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.Father, glorify your name.”
Some years ago, I found myself riding in a truck with a well-known Christian pastor. In the middle of our conversation, he said something in passing that has stuck with me for years.
How often have you thought that you were in a woeful season (suffering, pain, loss, grief) and that if you just hung in there a wonderful season would come (healing, blessing, joy, life)? But, it seemed like something always went wrong and life never fully came together?
In summary, he said that life does not have woeful seasons and wonderful seasons, but instead woeful and wonderful things in every season.
In John 12 we hear from the Lord Jesus Christ in His final days before dying for our sin on the cross. What Jesus did for us is wonderful, but for Him it was woeful. In Jesus’ example we learn about various kinds of suffering as:
- We suffer emotionally like Jesus who said, “my soul is troubled”. The language here is very strong and denotes how emotionally wrought, disturbed, and horrified He is regarding His coming cross.
- We suffer physically just as we read, “He said this to show by what kind of death he was going to die.”
- We suffer relationally just as Jesus who came to love, save, and serve a clueless crowd that did not understand or appreciate Him.
Amidst the woeful, we read of the wonderful in John 12:27-28 “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour.Father, glorify your name.”Then a voice came from heaven: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.” Jesus embraced the woeful cross knowing that through it wonderful glory would come to the Father, and wonderful goodness would come to us.
Indeed, in every season of life there is both the wonderful and the woeful. Sometimes, we get so overwhelmed by the woeful that we miss the wonderful.
How about you? What is woeful in your life right now? What is wonderful in your life right now?
