“Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.”
Romans 12:15 (ESV)
The truth is, life rarely goes back to “normal” after a difficult season. Hard times change people—and not just people but also the world around you. To resume life successfully after a difficult time, you’ll need to make some adjustments.
Expect to feel mixed emotions.
God’s people felt mixed emotions when they returned to Jerusalem after being held captive in Babylon for 70 years. Their city was in complete ruins, yet the first thing they did was rebuild their house of worship. As they finished laying the foundation, some of the people shouted thanksgiving to God, while others wept loudly.
Ezra 3:13 describes how their emotions mingled together: “The people could not distinguish the shouts of joy from the sound of weeping, because the people were making so much noise.
Maybe you too have experienced conflicting emotions when easing back into life after a period of suffering or loss—the loss of a loved one, a job, a home, or a friendship. It’s 100 percent normal to feel grief mixed with joy, and sadness mixed with excitement.
That’s why the first thing you should do is give yourself grace for the mixed emotions you feel—and give grace to others too. Difficult seasons, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are often felt by everyone. So it’s important to be empathetic toward people dealing with conflicting emotions too.
Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (ESV).
Change is hard to get used to. God will often have you learn new habits and behaviors as he rebuilds your life. So be kind to yourself—and to everybody else—when you experience mixed emotions.
When you’re coming out of a season of crisis, loss, or trauma, it can be hard to imagine getting back on your feet again. But God wants to give you a fresh start and help you build a life that is better than it was before.
Globalization and the attendant concerns about poverty and inequality have become a focus of discussion in a way that few other topics, except for international terrorism or global warming, have. Most people have a strong opinion on globalization, and all of them express an interest in the well-being of the world's poor. The financial press and influential international officials confidently assert that global free markets expand the horizons for the poor, whereas activist-protesters hold the opposite belief with equal intensity. Yet the strength of people's conviction is often in inverse proportion to the amount of robust factual evidence they have.As is common in contentious public debates, different people mean different things by the same word. Some interpret "globalization" to mean the global reach of communications technology and capital movements, some think of the outsourcing by domestic companies in rich countries, and others see globalization as a byword for
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