Be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. —James 4:9
Sin’s toll is evident everywhere. Crazed gunmen commit murder. Millions of children are shuttled between parents who have broken their marriage vows. Strangers meet on the internet and abandon their families.
And how do we respond? We check out emotionally, ultimately becoming indifferent to the barrage of such realities.
The prophets remind us there’s a time to mourn over what’s happening in our world, homes, and churches. And there’s ample cause for weeping, when we consider the immorality of our day, as well as our own “respectable” sins of entitlement, self-sufficiency, unforgiveness, prayerlessness, and lack of compassion.
Tears, of course, aren’t something we can manufacture. But when we get in God’s presence He will shatter our complacency, turning our laughter into mourning and our joy into heaviness over the havoc sin has wreaked in our world.
Yes, comfort and joy are part of our inheritance in Christ. But first comes the mourning.
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The Quiet Place: Daily Devotional Readings ©2012 Nancy Leigh DeMoss
Scripture taken from The CSB
Make it Personal
Even as you enjoy God’s good and gracious gifts, ask Him to stir and break your heart with the things that grieve His heart.