Jeremiah 33:10-11, “Thus says YHWH: In this place of which you say, ‘It is a waste without man or beast,’…there shall be heard again the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride…”
Joy will sing in the *very place* where sorrow now holds sway. This is Eucatastrophe, this is Resurrection. The one who died is the one who will live again—as the Beloved Disciple cries out, “It is the Lord!” (Jn.21:7) It is not another, it is not a replacement, it is *the Lord.* The very one of whom we were bereft, the very one for whom our souls cry out in the agony of loss, *this is the one* who has returned to us—beyond all possible expectation, beyond the barriers set up by the jaded and curse-scarred mind, beyond every anticipation of human reason: returned, restored, risen. That is the promise of Jeremiah’s words, a promise anticipatory of, and grounded from all eternity in, the resurrection of the crucified Son.
Resurrection hope is anticipated here in the blood-secured promise that *in this place* which is now desolation and waste, there will be gladness and joy. And it is true, Christian, it is true of all our desolations!
And see also: The voice of gladness that will ring in the place that is now desolate is not the voice of generic gladness, but the voice of nuptial gladness; it is the voice of the Bridegroom and the Bride. The joy that will swallow up all sorrow, the gladness that will overcome all desolation, is the joy of the wedding day, the gladness of the nuptial embrace.
Yes, the cosmos itself is the desolate city and the waste place—shattered by the sin of its first king and queen, inhabited now by the jackals and owls of sinning and restless spirits. Yet, in this very place that now stands with broken walls and wasted halls, the songs of mirth and joy will be heard.This city—its destruction borne in the crucified body of its Lord, and so its healing secured with His resurrection—will be restored, and it when it is, the joy that will fill its every corner and transfigure its every wound to beauty will be the joy of the Bridegroom and the Bride; the Lamb and the New Jerusalem; Christ and His Church.
