Quick, what's the shortest verse in the Bible?
If you answered, "Jesus wept" (John 11:35), you got one of them. The question needs to be changed to: What are the shortest verses in the Bible? That's because 1 Thessalonians 5:16 reads, "Rejoice always." Also two words. So there is a two-way tie for the Bible's shortest verse!
Now isn't it something that the two shortest verses deal with the perfectly opposite things: weeping and rejoicing? And the lesson could be that as Christians we are called to do both, often at the same time.
Let us weep with Jesus and yet rejoice in Him always!
Understand that weeping is not a sign of a weak faith or hope. It is the sign of a strong love. Jesus wept because He loved Lazarus who had died (see John 11:36). One pastoral concern I have is that sometimes we are trying to turn off the tears God meant for us to shed. Weeping is a part of love, and a blessed, holy thing in Jesus. Tears then wash our eyes and help us to see more clearly.
And yet we rejoice even while we weep. "Rejoice always." That includes times of sorrow. The sorrow is real but so is the joy right there next to it. At the death of a loved one there is, and often remains, a sorrow beyond words. Somehow at the same time, there is a rejoicing, sometimes quietly, in the victory of Christ over death and His promise to be with us.
Or look out at the world. It won't take long to find a reason to weep. And we should. But all the while, we rejoice in a faith, hope, and love that cannot be taken away, in a death and resurrection that cannot be undone, and in the Lord who has done it!
To others, it must be one or the other (or more often, neither). But to us it is both: weeping and rejoicing on the way to Heaven.
Remember the two shortest verses in the Bible!
