David Brisbin Podcast

Dave Brisbin 9.1.19 For past few weeks, we have been working through paradoxes, seeming contradictions—sticking points to being able to really trust our spiritual journeys. And nothing seems to stick us more than the difficulties, traumas, and sorrows of life. How are we supposed to understand them and their meaning in our lives? We’ve been programmed by church and culture to see them as evils in life, signs of God’s disapproval, chastisement, or correction—to be avoided or prayed away. But Jesus has a very different take that is illustrated well by Kahlil Gibran in The Prophet—that joy and sorrow are pulled from the same well, that joy is sorrow unmasked, and that the more that sorrow carves into our being, the more joy we can contain. What is Jesus saying when he tells us we’re blessed, fortunate, when we mourn—that our mourning is also the source of our comfort? There is a relationship between joy and sorrow that has nothing to do with the good and evil labels we typically attach. As we look deeper, we fin