When the sweet becomes bitter

Psalm 119:103

How sweet are your words to my taste
Sweeter than honey to my mouth! (Psalm 119:103)

I wonder if that’s your experience as you read the Bible? Sometimes - perhaps often - it can be wonderfully true. Promises God has made that have their ‘Yes’ in Jesus and their ‘Amen’ leaps from our hearts. Very great and precious promises that imprint his declarations of covenant commitment onto our souls. That we who once were not a people are now his people and he, the living God, is now our God. All by his free choice. And with the grounded assurance of a full and final hope that will not disappoint - all things reconciled and made new.

Words that are sweeter than honey could ever be.

Of course, not every part of the Bible is like that, not every part is as promising. And yet there are also those moments when a passage that looks less than appealing surprises us with joy, lifts our spirits and expands our sight of the Saviour.

But there are also dissonant experiences in reading the Bible. Not all his words have quite the same taste. It is possible that what begins as sweet turns bitter (Rev 10:9-11). When a piercing light exposes our sin and liabilities and we try to shield our eyes against its brightness. Or when we read of the coming judgement and grieve for those who do not yet know the Lord Jesus.

It may not fall to us to announce judgement in the way that, for example, Ezekiel or John did, but we might still know, all too keenly, the troubling tang of undeniable truth. How are we to bear witness to that in the relationships that are most dear to us? What are we to do with the griefs that engulf our hearts as those we love and care for fail to heed the call of our Lord Jesus to come to him?

Can we stop the sweetness being supplanted by the bitter sorrow? Can they even co-exist?

It seems that the place to take our anguish is into the presence of the one whose words we hold dear (and yet sometimes wish to close our ears to). We go to him in lament and find as we do that his words accompany us even there - words that tell of the tears of the Lord Jesus as he rode into Jerusalem, the heartache of Paul as he sees the people of Israel rejecting their promised Messiah, the weeping of John when he sees the unopened scroll in heaven.

All are as deep calling to deep in the roar of the waterfall that is God’s voice. The tumult in our hearts carried on the currents of scripture into the presence of God. We do not know what to do with the seeming conflict between the bitter and the sweet, the comforts and the consternation. There we sit, perplexed. So very thankful for the honeyed moments of deep joy and simultaneously shattered by the gathered gloom.

These are the moments we eat the sweet but bitter scroll.

Such is the present reality of living within the tension of ‘the now and the not yet’. It cannot be evaded. And its presence in our lives is, in itself, part of the Spirit’s witness to our hearts that we are indeed God’s children. Profound anguish and exuberant hope meet and kiss within the hearts of those who love the Lord and who drink deeply from his wells of salvation.

Those whose joy is deepest will often lament in severest pain, but their tears (the LORD himself promises) shall somehow be turned into songs of unalloyed joy, on the day when he restores the fortunes of the cosmos. Then, the bitter shall give way to the sweet for endless days.

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Lead, Lord Jesus, my frail spirit
To that Rock so strong and high,
Standing sure midst surging tempest,
Safe when pounding waves are nigh:
In the Rock of Ages hiding,
Come there flood or fiery blaze,
When the whole creation crumbles,
Rock of Ages, Thee I’ll praise.

When earth’s rocks are cleft asunder
By the terror of that day,
When, as cruel storms beat on them,
Strong men cringe in fear away,
That sure Rock will still be standing,
Midst the waters, midst the blaze;
There on heaven’s eternal ocean,
Rock of Ages, Thee I’ll praise.

(SJ Griffith, 1850-93, tr Stuart Harrison, 1935-2013.)