God created us as complex creatures, capable of feeling and sensing a whole garden of emotions. Made in the image of our Creator, we can both grieve the wrongs of this world, and celebrate the sweetness of this life. This 2-week reading plan will lead us through a series of passages from Scripture that examine the seasons of mourning and dancing in the life of a believer. In the written responses here on the site, our writers will enter into this tension, articulating their personal experiences with grief and joy in hopes of freeing you to explore your own.
It was April in Tennessee, and the reality that my child was hanging in a precarious balance between life and death, in part because my womb was acting as her life support, was never far from my mind.
That Monday morning, I kissed my husband and weekend guests out the door, then helped my toddler son get dressed and fed him yogurt and Cheerios for breakfast. That Monday morning, we blew bubbles. We played on the swing set. I read a book on the back porch, and we snacked on strawberries. When my toddler was fast asleep in his crib, I slipped my hands into a pair of old gardening gloves, knelt in the dirt, and got to work with my spade.
Bent over my pregnant belly, hands in the soil, the evidence of life kicked and turned within me. The gravity of the moment was lost on me at the time, but I see it now. Acting on hope. Believing promises. Burying seeds in the darkness. Knowing a thing can only produce something beautiful if it dies first John Ecclesiastes 3 tells us there is a time for every matter under heaven.
A time to be born, and a time to die. A time to plant, and a time to uproot. A time to weep, and a time to laugh. A time to mourn, and a time to dance. For our precious daughter, that Monday afternoon in April was a time to die. For us, it was a time to mourn. But it was also a time to actively hope in promises that life comes from death. It was a time to dance because our child was in the presence of her Savior.
