Sorrowful/Rejoicing

A contrast highlighted in Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church.

2 Corinthians 6:3-10

³ We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, ⁴ but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: in great endurance, afflictions, hardships, calamities, ⁵ beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; ⁶ in purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, ⁷ truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; ⁸ in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors and yet are true, ⁹ as unknown and yet are well known, as dying and look—we are alive, as punished and yet not killed, ¹⁰ as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing everything.

A Poem

“What, then, is joy? What, then, is sorrow?
Time alone can decide between them,
when the immediate poignant happening
lengthens out to continuous wearisome suffering,
when the labored creeping moments of daylight
slowly uncover the fullness of our disaster,
sorrow’s unmistakable features.”
– Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Letters and Papers from Prison, June 21st, 1944                                                                                                                                         

Reflection & Prayer

What tension speaks most powerfully to you amidst the many that Paul lists in the reading from 2 Corinthians? Pray for the church locally and around the world that experiences these paradoxes daily