“Those who sow with tears shall reap with songs of joy.”
Psalm 126:5 (NIV)
There are seasons in life when joy and grief sit so close together that you can’t always tell where one ends and the other begins. Seasons when love and loss hold hands. Seasons when you can laugh at 3:00 p.m. and cry at 3:15. Seasons where your heart feels like two rooms: one filled with sorrow that hasn’t finished speaking, and another where joy keeps knocking softly, asking to be let in.
Grief and joy are not opposites. They are companions, each revealing different sides of the same tender, trembling heart. Where there is deep love, there will eventually be deep grief. And where there is deep grief, there will eventually, by some miracle of God, be glimpses of joy.
This is the tension the psalmist captures in Psalm 126: “Those who sow with tears…” He assumes that tears, at some point, are unavoidable. Not optional. Not exceptional. Real. Human. Honest. Tears are the water of the soul. Tears are the prayers we cannot articulate. Tears are the testimonies we cannot yet tell. Tears are the seeds we never meant to plant.
But Scripture says that God takes even those, our soaked, cracked, painful seeds, and turns them into something only He can harvest. “Those who sow with tears shall reap with songs of joy.” That means joy is not the denial of grief; joy is the fruit of grief offered to God.
WHEN GRIEF CLOSES IN
I watched this reality unfold most profoundly in my own home when my wife lost her mother, my beloved Mother-in-Love. She was one of the wisest, strongest, most fiercely loving women I have ever known. A woman whose heart was expansive and generous, whose presence filled every room she entered. When she passed, it created a kind of quiet that no words could fill.
And I watched my wife grieve in waves, unexpected, unpredictable, unrestrained. She would be happy one moment and sad the next. We could be in the middle of a conversation, sharing laughter, and then something, a memory… a phrase… a familiar gesture, would stir the waters of her heart, and tears would come without warning. Not gentle tears. Deep, aching tears that carried the weight of a daughter’s love.
There were days she seemed perfectly steady, and then a scent, a song, or the sight of her mother’s handwriting would undo her. And yet even in those moments, heavy and raw as they were, I noticed something holy. Sometimes when she cried, she was also smiling. Sometimes grief pulled her under, and just as suddenly, a memory lifted her up. It was as if her mother’s love kept walking through the room long after her physical presence was gone.
I learned something watching my wife grieve: When a love is deep, grief will be deep. And when grief is deep, joy still finds ways to surface. This happens not because the pain disappears, but because love refuses to be buried. That is what it looks like when joy and grief share the same room. It is not emotional confusion; it is holy coexistence. It is the soul discovering that God can hold two truths at once: You are grieving… but you are still growing. You are hurting… but you are healing. You are weeping… but you are being watered at the same time.
THE THEOLOGY OF TEAR-SEEDS
In the Hebrew language that this text was written in, the phrase “sow with tears” carries the imagery of a farmer walking a field with wet eyes but faithful hands. He doesn’t stop planting because of sorrow. He doesn’t give up the harvest because of grief. He keeps walking. He keeps sowing. He keeps trusting that God does His best work in soil softened by tears.
Tears do something to the ground of the soul; they soften it. Tears loosen what pain has hardened, and tears prepare the heart for something new to grow. And just as no seed ever looks like the harvest it will become, your tears don’t look like joy right now. But God promises that they will produce something beyond what you can currently imagine.
JOY AS RESISTANCE
Joy, in seasons of grief, is not a feeling, it is a spiritual act of resistance.
It is your soul saying:
Grief may visit me, but it will not possess me.
Sorrow may bend me, but it will not break me.
Tears may water my ground, but they will not drown it.
Joy is the stubborn hope that God is still God, even here. Joy is a quiet defiance against despair. Joy is the courage to believe that something beautiful can still grow in soil soaked with pain.
THE GOD WHO COLLECTS YOUR TEARS
Psalm 56:8 gives us one of the most intimate images in all of Scripture: “You have collected all my tears in Your bottle.” God does not waste your tears. He gathers them and He remembers and He honors them. He uses them as raw material for the miracles He is preparing. Every tear is a seed. Every tear is noticed. Every tear is necessary. But tears do not get the last word, Joy does.
PRAYER
Lord, thank You for being the God who meets me in my grief and still invites me to joy. Thank You for holding my tears, honoring my sorrow, and reminding me that nothing I feel is wasted. Teach me to embrace the strange and holy tension of joy that lives alongside grief. Let my tears become seeds in Your hands, and let the harvest You bring surprise me with beauty. In Jesus’ name, amen.
SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE: HONOR BOTH SIDES OF YOUR HEART
Today, give yourself permission to feel two things at once.
Take five minutes and write down:
- One thing that is grieving you
- One thing that is giving you joy
Hold both in your hands. Let them coexist without shame or confusion. Offer both to God. Let Him show you that joy is not the opposite of grief, it is the promise that grief will not last forever.
Published on Jan 10 @ 12:40 AM EDT
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