Psalm 30

I like how this psalm ends: “You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent. Lord my God, I will praise you forever.” (vs 11-12) There are times in this world when promises like this seem almost impossible… but so necessary to cling to for hope’s sake.

As Christians, we look forward to the hope of heaven, where there will be no more sorrow and no more tears. I think we commonly believe that God will accomplish that by reversing the “bad” things that have happened to us here and replacing them with “good” things—as if we’ll take all the sin and evil, set it aside on the shelf, and turn our attention to better things.

But I think God has something even more glorious in mind. We will definitely be dancing and rejoicing, not wailing and mourning, but it won’t be because we’ve forgotten everything that happened to us here. It will be because God specializes in extreme makeovers.

Everything that has confused us in this life will, I believe, be made plain to us in the world to come. We will finally be able to see as God does. Everything that we found hard to understand will be explained. All the mysteries we encountered will unfold before us. Where our finite minds can only now see confusion and broken promises, then—when we can see as God does—I think we will see perfect and beautiful harmony. And as we discover how God has tenderly cared for us and worked everything together for our good, we will rejoice with unspeakable joy.

You see, we will not rejoice because the “bad” things have been done away with, but because we will finally see how God used them for great and glorious good. We will see that all the things we once wailed over were actually things to dance over and that all the things we once mourned over were actually things to rejoice over—all because our great God is capable of taking everything in this life and weaving it together for our good.

God specializes in extreme makeovers. And I believe that when we can see the end from the beginning, we will turn to God and say, “Well done.” We won’t say, Why did you let that happen to me? That was so painful! No, I think we will bow in awe and realize that God never leads us in a way different than we ourselves would choose to be led if we could now see as He does. And once we can see the glorious purpose being fulfilled in our lives, we will take off our sackcloth and dance!