Sorrow With Hope

"There is a difference between sorrow without hope, and sorrow with hope." Dr. David Jeremiah. 

What a indescribable difference there is between these two types of sorrow. Have you seen people who have no hope at all? The face of defeat? The sorrow that is so incredibly deep that it seems that the person might perish from the weight of the sorrow. I have seen that a few times with patients, and it is so hard to give those patients hope. Life is so miserable that they cannot see hope regardless of what might be said. 
The only hope we can have with sorrow is when we have faith in God. It is rather like the parable of the house built on rock--though I have always thought of that in more of a spiritual sense, our life is so connected to our spiritual health. ( Matt 7.24-27 ) If our spirit is well fed, the hardest paths are bearable, for we have the resources that those without God do not have; namely, God. We have the Creator to ask for strength and peace, and we know that He will never leave us. 
I have so often faced crushing sorrow with my health and the things I want to do and cannot do. I rarely have sorrow so deep that there is not a candle guttering in the wind of my sadness--but still burning brightly. That fire that stops the sorrow from entering that sorrow of unbearable pain is having the Holy Spirit with me. I have the access to the strength that I need...and the world is not as dark as it might have seemed earlier. 
Having that backing in this world is so important, for we can know that whatever happens to us will end up, eventually, with us being with our God. Paul was torn between longing for Heaven and staying on earth. ( Phil 1.23 ). Either way, we have God with us, it just is less noticeable when we are here on earth, and so easily distracted. 
Nothing can heal sorrow as well as God. He understands sorrow, after all, He wept for His friend Lazarus, even though He would raise him from the dead. He understands what it means to have such great hurts. It is so much better to be sorrowful with hope than without.