Last Updated on February 20, 2024
Someone sent me a great video clip from America’s Funniest Videos. I don’t know if it won, but I would’ve given it first place. It stars an unhappy baby who is trying his best to have a fit but can’t get any cooperation.
As the clip opens, we see the baby throwing himself down on the floor and wailing. Only seconds later his audience, who is obviously the camera person, moves to another room. We can’t see the baby now but we can still hear him–until he stops crying. Slowly, however he comes back into view sniffling all the way.
Once he relocates his audience, he falls out on the floor again, throwing a marvelous full-out hissy-fit — at least until the camera leaves. Once again, this forces him to dry it up and go searching for his stage. The scene replays over and over again, and it gets funnier every time.
It also raises a very serious question. Tell me, what do you and I do with our sad times? It occurs to me that we big people sometimes look for audiences in the wrong places, too, or haven’t you noticed? One of the most valuable lessons we can ever learn is to take our sad times to an audience of one, the One who sits on the throne.
David, the shepherd boy who became a king, learned this lesson well. You can see it all through the Psalms. David is the one who penned those famous words,
“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.”
Psalm 30:5 (NKJV)
It’s a familiar verse, but the key to it is found in the preceding verse, for while he was weeping, David was also crying out to the Lord. I believe the morning’s joy was no automatic result, but a direct consequence of that decision.
It’s vitally important that we seek the right audience and not let our weeping interfere with our sowing. We can have a pity party and refuse to sow our concerns in the right soil, but it’s a poor choice indeed, for it will not only deny us of a harvest but leave us with only our misery for company.
Let’s not be like the poor little boy in the video. If we’ll let go of our pain and bury it in prayer, we can bring forth sheaves of rejoicing.
– Psalm 126:5-6 (NKJV)
“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.
Excerpted from Devotions for the Hungry Heart: Chasing Jesus Six Days From Sunday. Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc. Copyright by Shellie Rushing Tomlinson. Used with permission.
