There she will sing as in the days of her youth, as in the day she came up out of Egypt. Hosea 2: 15
When was the last time you sang because you were happy? Believe it or not, for some, the memory goes all the way back to childhood. They remember skipping down the road, making up a song as they went, unaware that life could ever become heavy? “That child lives no more,” you say. Adult life has a way of silencing songs.
Abounding joy can become such a distant memory that we no longer believe ourselves capable of it. Sometimes we live inside consequences of our own choosing. Decisions made when we were young became roads we can not easily leave. Perhaps there were warning signs; perhaps there weren’t. There have been moments when we’ve looked at the years ahead and quietly wondered how our soul would survive them.
Other prisons arrive without our permission. An accident changes a body forever. A child is diagnosed with leukemia. An aging parent disappears slowly into Alzheimer’s while we care for the person who no longer remembers our name. At some point, the question changes from When will this end? to Will I ever feel like singing again?
But God has always known how to find His children in wilderness places. He knew the terrain of my life before I ever walked through it. There are chapters He did not prevent that I still cannot explain, but there is not one chapter He is unable to enter. And perhaps this is what redemption finally means ~ God does not necessarily give me back the untouched person I once was. He creates something deeper.
The joy God restores may carry scars. It may know what betrayal costs, what grief feels like at three in the morning, and how long a wilderness can last. Yet somehow it sings again because God proved Himself faithful inside what nearly destroyed me. God spoke to me while in wilderness places. He said, “I see you. You are not lost. Your sorrow is not the end of your story.“
Perhaps the child who once skipped down the road is not gone after all.
Lord, if sorrow has buried my song, call it out of the grave. Amen.
