Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Joy is on the Horizon! | The Gospels | John 16:16-33

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

How should Christians grieve? Can you trust God when your heart is breaking? What if your greatest sorrow isn't the end of your story? In today's episode, Patrick explores John 16:16-33 and shows how Jesus meets us in our sorrow with the promise that joy is already on the horizon. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: John 16:16-33

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life. In the time it takes to get to work. I'm Patrick Miller. A village in India called Gilar was cut off from the rest of the world by a massive jagged ridge of Cortize rock. If the rock wasn't there, people could have easily reached a nearby city where there was access to food and medical attention. But because of that one rock, villagers had to trek 34 miles around the mountain to get health care to buy food. Now in 1959 there was a villager named Dasrath Manji, and he was making that trek with his wife when she slipped on some scree and sustained massive injuries. She ended up dying as a result because he couldn't get her to a hospital soon enough.

He knew that if the mountain wasn't there, she would have lived. They would have got into the hospital and she would have been fine. And this led him into a ton of grief. He wept, he mourned, and then he set to work on the impossible. With a hammer and a chisel and a rope, he set out to cut a path through the mountain so that no no one else needed to experience what he did. For 22 years, he chiseled away, night and day. His neighbors mocked him, they called him a lunatic.

But after 22 years, he successfully cleaved a path 360 feet long, 30 feet wide, and 25 feet deep directly through the ridge. His labor reduced the distance between the village and the city from 34 miles to nine miles. In his later years, he watched children walking to school and families receiving medical care and he felt an overwhelming sense of joy. His tears of grief for his lost wife eventually became tears of happiness. When you lose someone you love or move away from some place that you love or a friend moves away or whatever tragedy may strike you in your life, it's often accompanied with seasons of grief and sadness. Now in the moment that grief feels impenetrable. It feels all-consuming,

everlasting. It's hard to imagine a day when life will go on without the sadness that you're feeling. Why? Because there's a gaping hole where someone you loved once stood, and everything around you reminds you of that person. And the moment you forget the hole, you just see something else or hear something else that points you back to the gap. Despite teaching his disciples again and again that he would die and that they would scatter, Jesus' disciples never quite believed him. Maybe they thought it was a parable or a metaphor or some strangely opaque teaching, but none of them thought it was real. Jesus knew it was real, and he knew that they would know grief. He said this to them during their last meal before his crucifixion.

John 16, verse 16. Jesus went on to say, In a little while, you will see me no more. And then after a little while, you will see me. At this, some of his disciples said to one another, what does he mean by saying, in a little while you will see me no more, and then after a little while you'll see me again? And what does he mean by because I am going to the father?

They kept asking, what does he mean by a little while? We don't understand what he's saying. Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, Are you asking one another what I meant when I said in a little while you will see me no more? And then after a little while you will see me? Very truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come. but when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish, because of her joy that a child is born into the world.

So with you. Now is your time of grief. But I will see you again, and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. Jesus knows what they refuse to accept. Grief is just around the corner. Their lives are about to spin out of control. Everything they've spent the last three years building alongside him is going to crumble and fall to the ground, and they aren't ready. We know this because later Jesus says, a time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered. Each of you to your own home, you will leave me all alone. Their grief over Jesus' arrest and death sentence will crush them. That's what he's saying. They won't be able to stand.

Again, this can just be the nature of grief. It colors the world. It dims your perception of reality. It's a rough stone that wears down your strength and crushes your imagination. And Jesus himself knew grief. He knew its power. its importance. After all, what could be more right than to weep when we lose someone that we love or when we say goodbye for the last time? Death is an alien invader in this world. The only sensible

response to it is to rage against it, to weep over it at the evil of the insensate, irresistible power of death. But Jesus won't give them wholly over to the darkness of grief, because while grief can speak a truth, it can also whisper lies. The most pernicious lie is that grief is ultimate. that grief has the final word, that death and sorrow are the unconquerable foe. Jesus knows the truth. Death can be defeated. Grief need not have the last word. Tears can be wiped away. So he dares to say these words to them, your grief will turn to joy. He compares the experience of grief to childbirth. Now, obviously, I've never given birth, but I've seen it, and I know that it's excruciating, painful beyond imagination,

and sometimes it seems like labor will last forever. But that's the thing about going into labor, though it seems unbearable and interminable. It always has an end date and end time. The labor will end, and then everyone will hear the cry of new life. And with that cry, in that moment, a mother's tears of pain transmute into tears of joy. Her eyes may never stop watering throughout the process, but the meaning of those tears they change. And this, according to Jesus, is the nature of grief for every Christian. First and foremost for the disciples, they would weep and despair after his death, but in the moment

he appeared resurrected, those tears, they would become tears of impossible joy. Death conquered, grief made mute, sorrow wiped away, and so it is for all grief amongst Christians. Though we may part ways, say our goodbyes, and spill our tears and funerals, we know that death is not the final curtain. There's another act. Our grief will be turned to joy. The strange part of this life is that we have to live between grief and joy. The death has come, the resurrection has not. So we live in tension because our grief is true and good, but so is our joy and so is our hope.

Grief can turn us into broken people if left unchecked by hope. But in the hands of hope, grief can break open mountains, create new paths, generate new life. So remember this and whatever you grieve today, joy is on the horizon in Christ. Thank you.