When the Crying and the Cheering Got Mixed Up

In the middle of broken-down Jerusalem,
on a bare and dusty hill,
God's people stood in a ring
around a floor of brand-new stones.

They had just come home from Babylon,
after long years far away,
years of aching for the place God had given them,
aching for the house where God had loved to be near.

And now the first stones of his house were laid.
A floor. A beginning.

Then the singing started.

The trumpets shone and blew.
The cymbals crashed bright and loud.
And the people lifted up their voices, all together,
like one big breath:

"He is good!
His love for us never, ever runs out!
His love goes on and on and on!"

The young ones were shouting.
Leaping. Clapping.
So glad they could hardly stand still.
Something good was beginning,
and they could feel it.

But off to the side,
some of the old grandmas and grandpas were crying.

Not because they were unhappy.
Because they remembered.
They remembered the first house,
the great golden one King Solomon built,
the one that shone when they were small.
And they could see, even now,
that this new beginning was smaller and plainer,
and it made their hearts ache,
the way you ache for something you have lost.

So there they all stood.
The cheering and the crying,
mixed up together,
so loud, so tangled,
that no one could tell them apart.
You could not hear where the gladness stopped
and the longing began.

And God heard every bit of it.
The shouting, he loved.
The weeping, he loved.
He bent close and gathered up both:
the joy of the ones who said "it is beginning!"
and the ache of the ones who said
"but we are not all the way home yet."

Because both of them were true.
Something good had started.
Really started.
And something far greater was still on its way.

That mixed-up feeling,
glad and sad, already and not-yet,
your heart was made for it.
It is the feeling of waiting for someone.

For one day,
into a world that was small and broken
and not-all-the-way-home,
God would send something greater than any house of stone:
a person.
Jesus. God himself, come near.

And he has come.
The good thing has truly started,
right here, already, in you.
And he is coming again,
and the second time
the glory will be greater than the first,
greater than any house,
greater than anything you have ever ached for.

So if your heart ever feels glad and sad at the same time,
you are singing the same song those people sang
around the brand-new stones.

And Jerusalem still needed help.
Her walls still lay broken on the ground.
And far away, in a king's shining palace, long years after this day, God would put his eye on one more man, a man whose tears would one day build a wall.