In our culture we spurn sadness as an enemy of the heart. We use pleasure as a painkiller so that we don’t feel the sadness that is there. But actually, as the 2015 Pixar film, Inside Out, creatively portrayed, sadness can be our saving grace. By ‘sadness’ I mean that legitimate response to the sad realities of life (so I am not talking about clinical ‘depression’ here). Sadness in the heart is like what pain or hunger are for the body. Pain alerts me to problems in my body and hunger turns me to food that nourishes my body. When I am hungry, I enjoy food more. Imagine never being hungry. You would miss out on the pleasure of food. So it is with sadness. Sadness comes from an emptiness of heart created by some kind of relational rift or loss. Allowing yourself to feel your sadness is the pathway to healing. It should not be avoided. The deepest form of sadness comes from a rift in our relationship with God and it is this sadness that we are most inclined to try to anesthetise (with drugs, pleasure, entertainment or by just keeping very busy). But this sadness is the most important of all. It is otherwise known as ‘penitence’. We rarely seek a state of true penitence and yet there is an immense reward in it. The world tells us to pursue happiness but I urge you to pursue sadness, for sadness is the seed of joy (Psalm 126:5). Let yourself feel the sad realities of life so that you can rejoice in the truth.
Ask God to make your heart more sensitive.
Read Ecclesiastes 7:1-6
