Joey Crandall
“Thus says the Lord of hosts:
‘The fast of the fourth month,
The fast of the fifth,
The fast of the seventh,
And the fast of the tenth,
Shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts
For the house of Judah.
Therefore love truth and peace.’
– Zechariah 8:19
True joy is one of those things – it is untethered from the present circumstances around us, and instead anchored into the heart of God.
There comes a moment after Israel returns from its captivity in Babylon: the temple in Jerusalem is being rebuilt; the people are living in accordance with God’s commands; and God is providing the means for the work on the temple to be completed.
And a delegation approaches the priests and the prophets and asks a simple question: “Do we continue to mourn the destruction temple?”
Perfectly sensible – the temple was being rebuilt, after all. It had been laying in ruins for more than 70 years, and now it was being raised back to life. Why continue to mourn?
But the Lord then brings a word through the prophet Zechariah that, rather than directly answer the question, instead begins to cut to the condition of the people’s hearts – essentially asking them to remember why the temple had been destroyed and why they had been carried away into captivity in the first place.
It was due to their repeated disobedience to His commands over the generations.
When He does address the fasts directly – it is simply this: the fasts will continue, but they shall be joy and gladness and cheerful feasts for the house Judah.
And, in that, an incredible principle is simply set forth.
Our God is a God who can take what is broken and make it to be joy and gladness. So that being true, we are to love truth and peace!
Within His answer, there is an implied – “Keep marking these things,” but leave them in God’s hands. Let the calendar keep rolling over them. And let His mercy and grace layer and layer and layer over these things until, down the road, you look back and, yes, the wound is still there.
The cut is still deep.
But there is so much that God poured into that wound over the many years. So much that He has poured out of that wound: His tender mercy, and His grace. His joy.
I wonder if that’s why He made our system of time so circular – how we spin around on our axis once every day; our moon circling us once a month; our planet circling the sun every year.
We return to the same spots in space and time with such precise regularity, and so often – in the return to the times of trauma and mourning and weeping – we dread those approaches.
But we lose in that dread the marvel of the cyclical nature of God’s creation.
He intended, from the beginning, to bring us back around to those dates.
He could have made the passing of time a simple progression along a straight line with some other measure to mark and count the days and months and years.
But He didn’t. He brings us back around, again and again.
And, as He does, the Lord keeps pouring new meaning, new mercy, new healing – new hurt even, at times – over the same days, the same dates.
We remember the same things – but He adds so much more depth and texture in time.
And the day becomes something different – growing – in time. Almost like a cushion of His presence and His design. A padding of His perfect will.
What was a fast of mourning shall become joy and gladness, cheerful feasts.
And it’s so important in that – it’s not that it will be joy and gladness right now.
This is a work our Lord works together over the many years. Over the many returns. Progressively.
He has delivered us, He daily delivers us, He will still deliver us.
Our God is determined to do good. And should your belief in that truth ever waver, just look to His promises built up within His word.
He doesn’t take away the markers – the anniversaries – but He certainly adds depth to the meaning of them as time rolls on.
Joey Crandall is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Carson Valley.