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“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”

December 16, 2021

Psalm 30 | Isaiah 54:1-10 | Luke 7:24-30

In the season of Avent, we begin our liturgical year and look forward to the coming joy of Christmas. We celebrate with decorations and lights and holiday traditions. Perhaps your decorations are a curated collection in a tasteful color scheme, or maybe they are like mine, a nostalgic patchwork of items scattered through the house. I cherish them for the memories attached: the little snowman crafted by a friend, my sons’ childhood books, the ceramic village my father sent. Some of the memories are bittersweet, the echo of relationships lost to time or distance or death. Advent is anticipation, but I also spend time looking back, and that can be hard.

The psalm for the day rings out with joy and praise to the Lord, yet through it runs the suggestion of difficult times: mourning and sackcloth, death and the Pit. This tension between the joys and sorrows of life feels immediately familiar. We don’t know what the psalm writer endured, but all of us face triumphs and adversities. The lines of verse shine with faith and resilience of spirit, and those qualities are just as meaningful today as they were when the psalm was written. The line that leapt out to me was: “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning”. Let us always be mindful of that joy. 

Deborah Britt