The World Cup, the Open, Iran, and the path to transforming joy
Let’s begin with good news from the weekend: JD and Usha Vance on Sunday announced the birth of their fourth child, the first baby born to a sitting US vice president in more than 150 years. Alec Neel Vance joins his older siblings Ewan, 9; Vivek, 6; and Mirabel, 4.
Next, we’ll pivot to weekend news that is good for some more than others:
- Spain won the World Cup by defeating Argentina 1–0 in extra time.
- Ryan Fox won his first major golf championship when he drained a birdie putt on the 18th hole to win the 2026 Open Championship in England.
- Andy Burnham becomes Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade today.
- The FDA on Sunday retracted its statement linking Taylor Farms to the cyclospora outbreak, reporting that its earlier lab result was a false positive.
And there was terrible news as well: The Pentagon said Sunday that a third member of the American military had died. The soldier was killed in northern Iraq during the disposal of a downed Iranian attack drone. On Friday, two soldiers were killed in an Iranian missile barrage in Jordan that left another soldier missing. Remains recovered on Sunday were believed to be those of the missing soldier.
The US is responding with a new round of airstrikes this morning in Iran, focusing on a northwestern city believed to be home to underground missile bases. Iran, in turn, launched an attack targeting Bahrain, the home of the US Navy’s 5th Fleet, and Kuwait.
You probably wish I had left the last two paragraphs out of today’s article. I wish I could have as well. But there’s a way of reframing bad news that redeems the secular for the spiritual and the temporal for the eternal.
“A joy that has passed through sorrow”
An article from the Worldview Bulletin Newsletter was in my inbox when I began work this morning. Written by Presbyterian pastor and theologian Thiago Silva, it focuses on what J. R. R. Tolkien called eucatastrophy.
According to Silva, the famed British writer coined the word “to describe the sudden, unexpected turn toward joy that occurs at the darkest moment of a story.” It combines catastrophe, a word for disaster, with the prefix eu, meaning good. However, as Silva notes,
This goodness does not cancel the catastrophe that precedes it. A eucatastrophe is not a clever escape hatch or a narrative shortcut. The danger was real. The loss mattered. The sorrow was not imagined or exaggerated. And yet, precisely when everything seems beyond repair, hope breaks in, not as something forced or sentimental, but as something fitting and deeply true. The joy feels undeserved, even shocking, and that is precisely why it rings with authenticity rather than artifice. . . .
Tolkien believed that stories shaped this way resonate so deeply because they align with something true about the world, something we sense intuitively even when we struggle to articulate it. The human heart longs for joy, but not cheap joy. It longs for a joy that has passed through sorrow and emerged on the other side.
Silva then notes that Tolkien “famously described the resurrection as the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation, the sudden and overwhelming joy that erupts from the deepest possible darkness.”
Here’s the point: What came for Jesus on Easter Sunday is coming for us all. We live in the junction between the cross and the empty tomb, fully aware of the pain and tragedy of our fallen lives but fully expecting God to fulfill his purposes in our world through his providential grace. We are honest about the darkness but confident in the light. We do not deny our suffering, but we deny its claim to ultimacy.
Silva concludes: “The story is not over. And when the final joy comes, it will not cheapen the sorrow that came before it. It will complete it.”
“When you truly know God”
When we know how the story ends, this changes the story for us.
Last night, my wife and I watched The Bourne Identity, a 2002 film adaptation of a Robert Ludlum novel. I read the book when it was published and we saw the movie when it was released. Accordingly, as we watched the film again, we knew not to worry when Jason Bourne’s life was threatened (repeatedly) because we knew he would win the fight, kill the assassins trying to kill him, and ultimately win the day.
Paul felt the same way about the “movie” of his life. Writing from a Roman prison, he was certain that “this will turn out for my deliverance” (Philippians 1:19). He did not mean that he would necessarily escape from jail, but that “Christ will be honored in my body, whether by life or by death” (v. 20).
As a result, he could declare with triumphant joy, “For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain” (v. 21). He could write Philippians, often called his “epistle of joy.” He could encourage us to “rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). And he could tell us to trust every challenge to God in prayer, knowing that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (v. 7).
When we remember that our momentary death leads to eternal joy, that the bad news leads to the best news, we are empowered to walk with the risen Lord Jesus in the face of suffering. He then transfuses temporal pain with timeless significance until the day his resurrection becomes our own.
- I. Packer observed,
“There’s a difference between knowing God and knowing about God. When you truly know God, you have energy to serve him, boldness to share him, and contentment in him.”
Will you experience this “difference” today?
Quote for the day:
“Jesus, the very thought of thee, with sweetness fills my breast; but sweeter far thy face to see, and in thy presence rest.” —St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153)
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