“You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy.”
Today, Jesus uses the parable of the woman in labour to explain how pain will be transformed into joy. He is speaking, it seems, of the suffering which he and his followers will face, and the joy they will be rewarded with at the end of time.
It is also something we know only too well from our daily lives, from small struggles and pains of most of the tasks we have undertake in learning and growing (no gain without pain, they say), to the hard pains of sorrow and anxiety which we bear in the major trials of life.
Yet even if we know that pain must be endured if we are to enter into joy, we are still puzzled and wounded by it. We still have our questions, just as the disciples did.
And Jesus tells us, that though it may be beyond this life, there will be a day when all will become clear:
”When that day comes, you will not ask me any questions.”
