This Too Shall Pass

...weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Psalm 30:5

30 years ago, in 1982, I heard a sermon by Godly Pastor Bob Andress, in First Church of the Nazarene, Raleigh, North Carolina, titled “This Too Shall Pass”, and I have remembered it since. Pastors, don’t ever underestimate the words you preach. They are God given and Inspired, and for a purpose. Maybe for very few in the congregation that day, but you always know when a sermon is just for you. I have had a fair few in my time, and this was one.

The application (I always like there to be some kind of application to my life) is obvious. The bad time you are going through will not last for ever. It will pass, just as all the other difficult times before this, have passed. Going through a tough time is not just for a few Christians. We all go through bad times, although some are worse than others, but there is one common thread which links them. They will pass, eventually, just like before. Now and again this sermon hits me fresh, as if I am hearing the truth for the first time, and I am left reassured in the grace of a loving Abba Father God.

This also reminds me of the old Southern preacher whose sermon was titled, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s coming”. Again the application is clear. The disciples wondered what had hit them when their Lord and Master had been crucified, but at the time they didn’t realise that Sunday was coming, and with it the resurrection. They didn’t know, but we do! Bad days and troubled times don’t last forever, so keep on keeping the faith, and remember and believe that ‘Sunday is coming’, and ‘This too shall pass’.

It’s 30 years later, and I’m about ready to believe in the truth of that old sermon again. How about you? I will leave you with a poem by Helen Steiner Rice:

This Too Shall Pass

If I can endure for this minute
Whatever is happening to me,
No matter how heavy my heart is
Or how dark the moment may be-

If I can remain calm and quiet
With all the world crashing about me,
Secure in the knowledge God loves me
When everyone else seems to doubt me-

If I can but keep on believing
What I know in my heart to be true,
That darkness will fade with the morning
And that this will pass away, too-

Then nothing in life can defeat me
For as long as this knowledge remains
I can suffer whatever is happening
For I know God will break all of the chains

That are binding me tight in the darkness
And trying to fill me with fear-
For there is no night without dawning
And I know that my morning is near.

...Helen Steiner Rice