Reflections for a Sunday: Joy not Sorrow

"The fact that I believe in God doesn’t mean I will get everything that I want. But it promises me just one thing. That behind everything that happened there is a purpose." ~freed hostage Sapir

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Sapir Cohen recalls how one of her captors interlocked his fingers into two fists and said: ‘When all the Jews are like this, it’s strong, strong, strong. We’ll wait a bit, there will be chaos among you.’ It was then that I understood they are acutely aware of our vulnerabilities and know that our greatest threat comes from within.

We complain so much. We hear it all around us day and night on social media, in shops, at people’s jobs, kids to their parents and parents to their kids. We are so spoiled; we have no idea.

Next time you want to complain, think of Sapir Cohen. Please listen to what she says about her days and nights in captivity. See the joy on her face and hear it in her voice. Ask yourself how it is possible to feel as she does after what she has experienced.

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“There are bedbugs on your body. It’s very hard to breathe there. You don’t have air. You don’t see the sunlight. But, you know, the fact that I believe in God, it doesn’t say that I will get everything that I want. And it doesn’t say that I will be happy all the time.

But it promised me just one thing. That behind everything that happened there is a purpose. And I just thought about that every time. If I need to be in the tunnels, I will be in the tunnels, and I will try to do the best that I can.”

If we aren’t happy, we think there’s something wrong with us, psychiatrists tell us there is and we get diagnosed and given a pill. Being unhappy is normal. And not getting everything we want is often the best thing for us. It is in the most trying situations that we make the most important choices, either to give in to hate or overcome that hate with love. To wallow in self-pity, or to turn to God for strength.

Quite a while ago, I shared one of my favorite opening paragraphs from one of my favorite books, Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts and I want to share it here:

"It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized, somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn’t sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it’s all you’ve got, that freedom is a universe of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life."

If you haven’t read Shantaram, I encourage you to do so. It is fiction based on Roberts’ incredible real-life journey of being a heroin addict and a criminal, escaping from Australia’s most notorious prison and making his way to India, where he lived in the slums and befriended drug lords. Shantaram is a story of love and redemption.

Despite all the worries that we have about AI taking over our minds, we are still free. Probably freer than anyone has ever been in history. Or at least we can choose that freedom. We don’t have to give in to the lies and the hate. We don’t have to sit passively and allow ourselves to be fed a constant dose of negativity.

Life is challenging but that’s how it’s supposed to be. The point of life is to learn something. As Sapir says, “Try to do the best that I can.”

Choosing joy over sorrow, even when we have much to be sad about, this is the challenge of our lives.

Millions have read and listened to the powerful words of Sapir and Roberts. They chose to be an inspiration, to give love and joy to the world despite the horrors they had faced.

We can all do this. It can be all of our stories.

Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zepplin always loved gospel songs. Here is his beautiful rendition of Saving Grace. All the years he was with Led Zepplin he was never allowed to sing it. Such songs weren’t the image he was supposed to portray.

Now he is free and gives us this gift that feeds our spirits and restores our strength, our love, our hope.

As it says in the song, I bid you goodnight on this Sunday. God bless you all in these trying times.