Recently I have been reading through John’s Gospel and last week I came to chapter 16, and those verses where Jesus says to his disciples,
‘A little while, and you will not see me, and again a little while, and you will see me’.
As if often the case with the disciples, they are confused by Jesus’ words and so he expands on what he had said by adding,
‘Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.’
And it got me thinking as to what Jesus would want us to understand from what he said.
Jesus said these things the day before he knew he would be crucified. And so it seems pretty clear that he was referring to the sorrow his followers would feel following his death – a sorrow, he claimed, that would last only as long as the three days it would take for him to be raised back to life.
But I can’t help thinking that there is more to what Jesus was saying because, where there is a short term fulfilment to biblical prophecies, there is very often another, longer term, fulfilment too.
In which case, just as they would have been to the disciples, Jesus’ words can be a comfort to believers who hear them today – two thousand years after they were first spoken. Because, just as the disciples were sad after Jesus’ death, and subsequently rejoiced when Jesus returned from the dead, so we who currently experience sadness can also look forward to the day when we will see Jesus and our sorrow will be turned to joy when he returns to earth at his second coming.
‘But hold on a minute,’ you might saying to yourself, ‘when Jesus was speaking to his disciples, he said it would be ‘just a little while’ before they would see him again. How can his words ‘in just a little while’ have a long term fulfilment when 2000 years have already past since he first said them?
Well firstly remember this – ‘that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.’ [2 Peter 3:8]
And secondly let me refer you to King David – the author of Psalm 37 – somebody else who might also perhaps, consider two millennia to be synonymous with ‘just a little while’.
I love the honesty of the psalms, I love the way they reflect the reality of how we sometimes feel, the reality of what we sometimes see around us, especially when what we feel and see around us, is not what we would want to.
Sometimes the wicked do prosper, and sometimes the righteous are oppressed and sometimes, when evil seems to have the upper hand, our sorrow is intense. If you don’t believe me, ask the people of Ukraine and those currently suffering so horribly in the Middle East.
But, says King David, all that is wrong in the world will one day come to an end – the current unsatisfactory state of affairs is but a temporary one.
And not only is it temporary, the pain and sadness associated with it will be short lived too – for, as he says in Psalm 37:10, ‘in just a little while’ order will be restored.
Soon the wicked will be no more, the meek will inherit the land and, as Revelation 21:4 later goes on to assure us, one day all our tears will be wiped away and death shall be no more.
Because in just a little while the former things will pass away.
But there will be those who might understandably say that they have already suffered for a long time. Their pain has not, as the apostle Paul describes it, been ‘light and momentary’, – rather it has been intense and prolonged. How then can David speak of all being well in just a little while, when some have had to endure hardship for decades?
Well in just the same way that Jesus can. By stepping back and considering the future – and by recognising that ‘the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that will one day be revealed’. [Romans 8:18]
Make no mistake, the current pain is real. Jesus likens it to that of childbirth, pointing out how the mother’s genuine anguish turns to joy with the arrival of her child. John Piper gives a powerful illustration when he asks us to imagine walking through a hospital ward and hearing someone screaming in pain. How we feel about what we are hearing depends, he says, on whether we’re on an oncology ward or a labour ward.
In referring to the pain of childbirth, Jesus is saying that the arrival of new life is a picture of our own future glory, one that, we mustn’t forget, will last for all eternity.
Furthermore, just as our future glory is immeasurably greater than our current suffering, and our future joy immeasurably greater than our current sadness, so too will our eternity be immeasurably longer than the time we now spend in this vale of tears.
So yes, weeping may tarry for the night time – but joy will come with the morning. [Psalm 30:5].
In just a little while, the sun will rise.
‘So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison’.
Which means that our suffering isn’t meaningless – it has a purpose, it’s doing something…
‘as we look, not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.’ [2 Corinthians 4:16-18]
Jesus himself said, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ [Revelation 22:20] and when he returns we will see what currently we can’t
And whether that be in our life time or not until long after we have died, what we will finally see on that great and glorious day will be infinitely worth our current ‘momentary’ wait.
For the ‘little while’ we have waited will not be worth comparing with the time we have to enjoy being at home at last in the presence of our loving Heavenly Father.
When our joy will be complete.
Related posts:
To read ‘Weeping with those who weep’, click here
To read ‘Still weeping with those who weep’, click here
To read ‘All’s Well that Ends Well’, click here
To read ‘on the FALLEN and the FELLED’, click here
To read ‘What becomes of the broken hearted? Sorrowful yet always rejoicing on Palm Sunday’, click here
To read ‘Why do bad things happen to good people? Sorrowful yet always rejoicing on Good Friday’, click here
To read ‘Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things? Rejoicing, though temporarily sorrowful, on Easter Day’, click here.
To read ‘T.S. Eliot, Jesus and the Paradox of the Christian Life’, click here
To read “Luther and the global pandemic – on becoming a theologian of the cross”, click here
To read “Why do bad things happen to good people – a tentative suggestion”, click here
To read “Suffering- A Personal View”, click here.
To read ‘Monsters’, click here
To read ‘On Sleeping like a Baby’, click here
To read ‘But this I know’, click here
To read ‘But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope’, click here
To read “Hope comes from believing the promises of God”, click here
To read ‘The Promise Keeper’, click here
To read ‘Hearing the grass grow’, click here
To read ‘Because the world is not enough’, click here
To read ‘Do you hear the people sing?’, click here
To read ‘Faith and Doubt’, click here
To read ‘Real Power’, click here
To read ‘Foolishness – Law and Gospel’, click here
To read, ‘But this I know’, click here
To read ‘Rest Assured’, click here
To read ‘The Resurrection – is it just rhubarb?’, click here
To read ‘One Day’, click here.
To read ‘General Practice – still a sweet sorrow’, click here
Some musings 