Romans 7:24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?

      “And there begins my sadness,” From Shakespeare’s play As You Like It. 

      I thought of the sadness many are born into. The sadness is – the moment we are born, we all have an appointment with death and will die one day. Eccl. 3:1 To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2a A time to be born, and a time to die. From the first day of our conception, we are heading towards death, and the first day of our birth, we are struggling to live and make it through the temporary lifespan of existence within this world’s laws of life and death. Is that why sadness exists?  Because deep down in our being, we know that death is written in the code of our body’s DNA, and there is nothing we can do about it. Heb. 9:27 Just as man is appointed to die once, and after that to face judgment. At the same time, there is a mystery of eternity being in our hearts that gives us glimpses of a possible long existence, but, sad to say, we cannot see or understand its meaning.

      The despair and unfair circumstances that most of the world’s population live with were never God’s idea. This messed-up world and hard existence are the result of the fallen nature of sinful man. The Garden of Eden’s template was the original setup. I have no idea how God was going to introduce the residents of the garden to eating from the Tree of Life. I could only speculate that over time, God would have taught those living in Eden what was entailed in living forever. The sadness is that we never had the opportunity to find out because our first parents were duped into doing what God had strictly said not to do. Gen. 3:6 The woman saw that the tree was good for food and delightful to look at, and that it was desirable for obtaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. And there begins our sadness. Choosing to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil versus eating from the Tree of Life is a battle that is still going on to this day.

      We have been given some glimpses as to what The Tree of Life could have given us. We can still partake from the offshoot of this tree, but from a position of being justified through Christ’s salvation. Prov. 3:13 Happy is the man that finds wisdom, and the man that gets understanding. 18 Wisdom is a tree of life to those who embrace her; happy are those who hold her tightly. The Lord indicates that our words can bring healing to sadness and can help lift the spirits of a person’s heart. Prov. 15:4 The soothing tongue is a tree of life, but a perverse tongue crushes the spirit. The issue of sadness is that the world’s default setting is a perverted tongue, and therefore, the majority of people are walking around with a crushed spirit. The sense of sadness surrounds their lives, and these people seem to live just out of reach of being delivered from this miasma of stinking living, but no one knows how to get past this foul smell of living.

      That is the state of the world. The position or foundation of being in and from this world is a sad journey of death and dying. This was the case for the Samaritan woman who was heading to the well to get water. Her thoughts might have been about all the terrible relationships she had lived in with the men who had drifted through her life with promises of love but ended up loveless. When she met Jesus and the Lord had touched her point of sadness, she could not help but respond to the Lord, who was offering true love. John 4:25 The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” There it was, the introduction to the one who could remove the sadness of empty living, and the sadness that sin caused in one’s life. The woman’s overwhelming revelation was spoken out loud to those who would hear her. “Come meet a real man with real answers!” John 4:28 The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men, 29 “Come, see a Man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

       The Samaritan woman had partaken of the healing words that Jesus spoke, and these words were from the Tree of Life as far as the woman was concerned because she was able to finally share her heart’s expression with the townfolks who also ate from the words Jesus was sharing for the few days He was with them. John 4:42 Then they said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world.” The amount of sadness that was replaced with the joy of the Lord is palpable in this section of scripture. The outcasts of society of that time ended up with a full measure of God’s living word of goodness and an assurance of God’s love for them all. What an amazing revival of hearts that eating from the Tree of Life, so to speak, brought to a people who were going about their day in the sadness of the times.

      This same miracle is available to those who are in Christ Jesus. We can eat of the word that the Holy Spirit ministers to our hearts, and we can enter into the joy of the Lord as we travel through the time we have on this earth. Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore. We are not permanent residents of this earth, because our place is with Christ in heavenly places. There may be some sad days that we will walk through, but the joy of eternity with our God is the balm that gives our lives meaning and strength to keep changing the sadness of the world into the Joy of God’s infinite living. May we all come to know the Lord’s gift of life in Him. Amen!