Sermons from the Psalms, 6 - The Transiency of Tears
By Clovis G. Chappell
"Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning." Psalm 30:5
Clovis G. Chappell: WHAT a gem of a text! Of course there are many who do not believe it, who feel that it is beautiful poetry and nothing more. There may be those who have found life especially hard, who will fling away from it indignantly, declaring that it simply is not true, that their tragic experiences have demonstrated its utter falsity. But, its truth or falsity aside for the moment, surely it is a faith that is well worth possessing. To those who flatly declare that they cannot believe it I think our poet would say what the artist, Turner, said to a woman who could see no fidelity in his picture of the sunset. "Why, Mr. Turner," she said, "I never saw a sunset like that." "Aye, Madam," was the answer, "but don't you wish you could?" "O, poet of the sunny face," you may cry wistfully or petulantly, "I cannot share your optimistic faith" "Aye," he answers, "but don't you wish you could?"
What is the faith of this psalmist? He is daring to tell us that in this world of change and decay, in this world where our hearts are so often broken and our faces so often wet with tears, that joy may be a more abiding guest than sorrow. He does not promise exemption from sorrow. He makes no claim to the discovery of an ideal world. But what he does say is that while weeping may come in as a wayfarer and spend the night, that the unwelcome guest need not abide, that he need not establish himself upon our shoulders like an old-man-of-the-sea. He may remain for the night, but he cannot abide the dawning of the day. Tears may come, but they will be transient. With the rising of the sun they will vanish like the dew or be kissed into jewels by its splendor. "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning."
What a beautiful reading of things, and how refreshingly unique! It is just the opposite of the commonly accepted view. Are we not constantly reminding ourselves of the transiency of our joys? How often, for instance, we look upon the innocent and care-free play of children with a mingling of envy and pity. How joyful they are, and how soon they must leave it all behind, pass out of their Eden of morning gladness into a harsh and rugged world where the stones will bruise their feet and where the thorns will pierce not their bodies only, but their hearts as well. How fleeting is the springtime of life! And the springtime of the heart is often more fleeting still. Byron found it so:
"'Tis not on youth's smooth cheek alone
The blush that fades so fast,
But the tender bloom of heart is gone
Ere youth itself is past.
O, could I feel as once I felt
And be what I have been
And weep as I could once have wept
O'er many a vanished scene.
As springs in deserts found seem sweet
All brackish though they be,
So midst the withered waste of life
Those tears would flow to me."
Then there is the joy of courtship between a man and a maiden, the thrill of a growing love, the romance of marriage, the gladsome glamor of the honeymoon, the sweet climax of the making of a home. But we are told that these joys are also fleeting. Too often the romance does not outlast the honeymoon. The radiance soon dies and wedded life sinks down into the dull, drab commonplace.
The other day we were to have a wedding at the church of which I am pastor. As I was going in to perform the ceremony I noticed the car in which the bride and groom were to go to the station to begin their honeymoon. Somebody had decorated it with a flaring placard which pictured a man and a woman glaring angrily and disgustedly at each other. Under the picture were these words: "When you get what you want, you don't want it." Of course it was only a joke, but it is too often the tragic truth to be amusing. And even where love lives and our dreams come true, sorrow soon calls. How lovely was the home of your childhood, but to-day that home is only a memory. There is no road that leads to it, for it is a part of a buried yesterday.
This note of the transiency of our joys is one that sobs its way through much of our literature. Every one knows that -
"Pleasures are like poppies spread,
You seize the flower, the bloom is shed;
Or, like the snowfall in the river,
A moment white, then melts forever." (Robert Burns, ca. 1780)
Again we say urgently
"Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles today
To-morrow will be dying." (Robert Herrick, 1648)
Or we sing plaintively
"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright,
The bridal of the earth and sky;
The dew shall weep thy fall to-night;
For thou must die." (George Herbert, ca. 1630)
And old Omar with his mug of wine at his lips, seizes us almost rudely by the shoulders and shakes us frantically, urging us to drink and enjoy our fleeting moment of laughter while we may.
"A momentary taste of happiness amid the waste,
Then the nothing we set out from, O make haste."
Shakespeare also speaks to the same purpose, showing us a man on the point of arriving only to be quickly overtaken by disaster.
"And when he thinks, good easy man, full sure his honors are a-ripening, then comes a frost, a killing frost." (Henry VIII)
And so they go on endlessly with their songs of the transiency of joy. But here is a glad voice raised to tell us that it is weeping that is soon gone. It may tarry for a night, but joy will surely come with the morning.
