No one understands the relationship between joy and suffering better than the Son of Man. My God became human, his love insisting that I not be alone in my struggles. When I hurt, he knows.

Note from Randy [Alcorn]:  I have the greatest appreciation and respect for Joni Eareckson Tada. With her warm-hearted exaltation of God’s sovereign love, she has profoundly impacted my life and Nanci’s life, along with that of countless others. She’s a living example of Psalm 119:71, which says: “My suffering was good for me, for it taught me to pay attention to your decrees.”

In this touching article, Joni writes, “Resilient joy makes hope come alive, so much so that we can be ‘sorrowful, yet always rejoicing’ (2 Corinthians 6:10).” This sister is pure gold. She lives what she writes. As you read her words, sit at her feet and learn what it means to trust in Jesus and find great joy, even when life is hard and painful.

(Joni was recently on Alisa Childers’s podcast, talking about her new book Practicing the Presence of Jesus and the nearness of Christ in 50 years of suffering. It’s a touching interview.)

I Sing My Way Through Pain: Three Lessons in Resilient Joy

Joy is found in the strangest places. Take this parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field” (Matthew 13:44). When we read this, we may assume the field is attractive, something we would love to purchase anyway: a sun-drenched meadow dappled with wildflowers, or a garden plot with rich soil ready for tilling.

But life is not like that. We can see the field in this parable as representing what God would have us embrace for the sake of our joy. His lot for you may not be attractive; it may resemble a sandlot with broken bottles, rusty oil cans, and old tires scattered around. It may be a bleak field, with nothing about it even hinting of wealth.

Until you discover it hides a treasure. Then the scrap of hard dirt and weeds suddenly brims with possibilities. Once you know great riches are concealed there, you’re ready to sell everything to buy it. It’s what happened to me.

Striking Gold

Early on in my paralysis—and almost by accident—I unearthed an unexpected treasure. I opened the word of God and discovered a mine shaft. I dug my paralyzed fingers into a weight of incomprehensible glory, a sweetness with Jesus that made my paralysis pale in comparison.

In my great joy, I went out and sold everything, trading in my resentment and self-pity to buy the ugly field nobody else would want. And I struck gold.

After decades of using the pick and shovel of prayer and Scripture, my field has yielded the riches of the kingdom of heaven. I have found a God who is thunderous, full-throttled joy spilling over. His Son swims in his own bottomless ocean of elation, and he is positively, absolutely driven to share it with us. Why? As he puts it, “[so] that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11). Jesus is after nothing less than our full joy.

But deep in the bedrock of Scripture, my shovel hit something hard and unyielding. God is nobody’s water boy. As the solemn Monarch of everything and everyone, he shares his joy on his own terms. And those terms call for us to suffer—and to suffer, in some measure, as his beloved Son did when he walked on earth (2 Timothy 2:12).

Rejoice in Hope

No one understands the relationship between joy and suffering better than the Son of Man. My God became human, his love insisting that I not be alone in my struggles. When I hurt, he knows. But Jesus does not merely sympathize with me; he’s done something about it. Through his death and resurrection, he has freed me from sin’s power and, in part, from the suffering that results from it. And he will free me fully in the age to come.

That coming age is my joyous hope! It’s hope that sees Jesus on his throne with his kingdom filling every corner of the cosmos. Hope that envisions sorrow and sighing erased from the face of the universe. Hope that eagerly awaits the moment when pain and tears will be banished and evil punished.

Read More