Mourning and Dancing

We’re so afraid to be sad. We’re so uncomfortable with our own brokenness. Yet, that’s what we are. We are a broken people, living in a broken world, trying to navigate this life alongside other, equally broken people. It can get messy sometimes. In fact, it most assuredly will.

That’s the expectation... or at least it should be. We should expect to be caught up in the backwash of a broken, flawed humanity and expect that we will be sailing into choppy seas sometime in the future, if we’re not there currently.

Scripture tells from the very beginning of creation, there was death and destruction. Humanity did not get very far before a world of hardship made itself known to its inhabitants. But that’s where proper expectations can help a great deal. Knowing that we live in a diseased, when the storms hit, the affects will not be quite as devastating as it otherwise would have been. When we look at hard times, and are able to say “We’ve been expecting you,” it really can suck the wind out of the sails. Storms are always less traumatic when we’re prepared.

This of course does not mean we should live in fear, or in a state of bleakness. But learning to properly mourn the darkness that surrounds us in a broken world and to properly celebrate and embrace the light we’re also surrounded by, which is made all the more beautiful when compared to the darkness, all makes for a well-adjusted and healthy spiritual life.

Henri Nouwen wrote, “We tend to stay away from mourning and dancing. Too afraid to cry, too shy to dance… While we live in a world subject to the evil one, we belong to God. Let us mourn, and let us dance.” (Nouwen, Suffering and Joy)

We live in a world of sorrows, and we only model the example of Christ when we mourn and cry over the brokenness we find ourselves surrounded by. This is indeed a healthy spiritual practice. Yet we also model the example of Christ when we rejoice and celebrate that the Great Healer is on the move.

While we currently live on the turf of the enemy, the future is one where He will indeed “wipe every tear from (our) eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, “I am making everything new.” (Rev. 21: 4-5)

Yet, until then, we are merely living in what C.S. Lewis calls The Shadowlands: just a dull, barely recognizable, glimpse of the life to come… the real life… the one we were created to absorbed into and the one we were created to finally be fulfilled by, and to finally feel at home and to finally feel at rest.

But until then, let us dance when times are good, and let us mourn (and mourn deeply without embarrassment) when times are bad. Knowing that troubles are going to come while we still live in this small, poor representation of what life is supposed to be and will be, while looking forward to the day when the very hand of God will wipe away every tear that has ever fallen on our cheek, really does beg the question, “Where, O death, is your sting?” (1 Cor. 15:55)