Psalm 30:5

"For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." (Psalm 30:5)

 

God is necessarily a God of wrath, for He is a holy God and cannot ignore human sin. Nevertheless, He is even more a God of love. His very purpose in creation was that His love could be manifested to men and women created in His image.

 

Because there is sin, there must be suffering and death, but He is "slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy" (Psalm 103:8). He has provided a marvelous means of forgiveness and salvation to all who will accept it, through the substitutionary death of His Son. This was a most cruel death, but even this was ameliorated by God's overshadowing mercy, and there was "joy . . . in the morning!" He "for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God".

 

Likewise in each believer's life there must be pain and weeping, but as measured in the scales of eternity, these will only "endure for a night," and one morning the night will vanish forever. "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: . . . for there shall be no night there" .

 

Therefore, as the apostle Paul said: "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory". We can, like Him, "reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us". We will be forever "in Christ," who could say prophetically while looking toward the cross (as recorded in one of the Messianic psalms): "In thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."