Sorrow and Joy

Scripture Reading: Judges 1-2; Psalm 90

Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us… Psalm 90:15

Psalm 90 is one of the Psalms that stick out. We notice it. It is a beautiful piece of literature, not as well known as Psalm 23, but it stands on its own as one of the great Psalms. It is a prayer of Moses, written down and preserved for the benefit of hundreds of generations.

Moses wrote it as a reflection of his own experience. He knew sorrow, having watched an entire generation die in the wilderness – his own people, walking around in circles and dying under the shadow of judgment on their unbelief. Psalm 90 is an honest confession of pain under sin’s curse. Moses writes about human frailty and mortality and the heavy weight of divine discipline.

But there is a shift in verse 15. There, Moses asks for a joy that is as deep as the sorrow he had known. He isn’t pretending the years in the desert weren’t real or insignificant. He is asking God to redeem them. It is a kind of holy hope.

This is not shallow, fake optimism. This prayer is rooted in the character of God. It is a gospel-shaped prayer.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus bore the suffering of the Cross for the joy that was set before Him. On the other side of the darkness of the Cross was the bright light of the resurrection. Joy would break through like the morning sun.

We can pray Psalm 90, not because we enjoy suffering, but because we know the One who can make our suffering serve His purposes. We can pray with the hope of Moses because of the resurrection of Christ. Because Christ died and rose again, we can pray in faith, knowing that God will answer the years of our tears with an eternity of joy.

As Paul said, “I consider the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing to the glory that is to be revealed in us.”