As a progressive, I believe there are many names for God and many ways to God – this article reflects one of those ways. Take from here what works for you. Celebrate life with joy and peace!
As we stay connected to God, the Spirit of God will grow in us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These wonderful qualities are attributes of God. As God’s light shines in us, it will nourish the health and maturity of this fruit.
Previously, we talked about love; being like a gold nugget and how important it is to sift out all of the “stuff” in our lives; and what will remain? Love!
Today, we talk about that exciting, fabulous, fleeting experience, that sweetness that washes over us like a wave, the experience of joy. The delight of a sunset at the ocean, walking into an air conditioned room after being in the hot sun (aahh!), attending a beautiful concert or seeing a great Broadway production!
All of these exquisite moments bring us a deep sense of joy and gratitude. All of these experiences and many more that you can think of, can be moments of great joy!
Can you remember one of your earliest memories when you experienced joy? Think about it for a moment!
How about hearing the music of the ice cream truck coming down your street on a hot summer day!
What about the first time you could stay up past your normal bedtime!
And chasing fireflies on a warm summer night, putting them in a jar next to your bed and watching their glow as you fell asleep. Aahh, moments of great joy!
Now that we’ve gone down memory lane, the truth is that we grow older (notice I didn’t say we grow up!) and our feelings and our attitudes about what joy and happiness is change over time. We begin to see that as we get older, joy comes and goes; it’s here one minute and gone the next!
We recognize that change is just a part of life. Like waves at the beach, change is the one constant in life. And even though we can’t predict the change, change is inevitable.
The 54-year-old is no longer the 20-year-old, let me tell you! It’s a constant discovery of different muscles and joints that before went unnoticed; and then some of us are still waiting for that gray hair to come in. And that’s the physical changes. What about the change that happens inside our soul? We have an awareness of our mortality, that our days are numbered. So the challenge to us is in the midst of constant change to still be able to see joy in our lives.
In our reading today, Jesus said to his disciples, “You will have pain, but your pain will turn to joy!” Do you believe that? Do you think the disciples believed that? I don’t know.
I did a Google search on joy, and it’s amazing what you can find. You could surf the net forever looking for joy!
Here are some tidbits of what I found.
C.S. Lewis, the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, had a wonderful marriage, with all of its ups and downs. His wife was dying of cancer and as soon as he found out he was already grieving her loss. He said to his wife, “I don’t know how I can live without you. We had so much fun, so much joy. And now I’m already feeling so filled with sorrow … grieving.” His wife said to him (this is from the movie Shadowland), “Honey, you don’t get the joy without the sorrow. That’s the way it goes. It’s part of the deal.” What do you think of that?
Theologian, Henri Nouwen, suggests that perhaps there’s no such thing as pure and complete joy … that every moment of joy is tinged with a little bit of sorrow. He goes on to say, “In every smile, there’s a tear, and in every embrace there’s a little bit of a feeling of loneliness.” Wow, so are we having fun yet?
In the challenge of finding joy and happiness in our lives, there’s still this fact of change throughout our lives. Understanding this, let’s think about three responses to this reality. I’d like to suggest that one response works better than the other two. Here we go.
The first response is that we want to cling to the joy that comes into our life. We want to hold on to it. William Blake, romantic poet of British literature, said, “He who binds himself to joy, does the winged life destroy.” In other words, in so many ways we cling to joy, we want to hold on to it and tightly grasp it, then, it dies right inside of our hand.
It’s like a parent holding on to a child long after the need to let that child grow and go and yet we still hold on and we still cling … and in doing that, sometimes, we hurt that relationship.
And sometimes we cling on to the past. We have such a sense of joy from the past that nothing in the present is going to measure up to the past. As we cling on to the past, we lose the present moment. The secret is to enjoy the moment of joy in the moment. Blake goes on to say, “He who kisses the joy as it flies by, lives in eternity’s sunrise!”
The second response is the opposite of clinging to joy; we don’t allow ourselves to experience it. We guard ourselves against it.
So many hard things happen in life, we have so much disappointment, we understand what grief is all about, and so we protect ourselves against all the emotions and we shut ourselves down emotionally. And given what some people go through in life, how can we blame them?
Some people tragically fill that empty hole inside their hearts by abusing alcohol and drugs as a way of escape. You can run, but you can’t hide. There are so many ways we retreat from ourselves emotionally. “If I don’t feel any joy then I won’t feel any pain!” It’s not a good response to shut ourselves down.
So here’s the third response. The third response is to live fully present in the moment; live life to the fullest, embrace it all. That’s what Jesus did. Jesus came and lived in the moment, lived all the emotions we experience. He experienced life.
When his friend Lazarus died, and his sister brought Jesus to the tomb, Scripture records the shortest verse in the Bible. “Jesus wept.” Jesus came and experienced the full range of emotions.
And when it comes to joy, remember how the Gospel of John records how Mary Magdalene was outside the tomb weeping and asked the gardener where they took Jesus’ body, and then Jesus calls her by name, “Mary!” Oh, such joy!
As an Easter people, full of resurrection power and new life, we are on a journey; a journey of faith and not on sight. We know how it ends.
“It might be Friday, but Sunday’s a comin’!”
Paul knew how it ended, and that’s why, even when he was in his prison cell, he could say, “Rejoice in the Lord always; and again, I say rejoice!”
We’ve seen the end of the movie; we’ve read the last chapter of the book; so now we can go back to the middle of the movie, because we know how it’s going to end.
Once we know that, life can take on a whole new perspective even in the hard times, even in the tragic times, even in the fearful times. The fact is we’ve seen the power of the resurrection!
Maybe it is possible, then, that we can kiss joy as it flies by. Why? Because we are already living in an eternity sunrise! We kiss the joy as it flies by. As we hear a belly laugh, as we appreciate a beautiful flower, as we take a bite of a delicious meal, all of it whatever it is, is somehow transformed in our eyes and we can see it all with joy, and we kiss it, and then we let it go with gratitude.
Let joy fill your life, no matter how that joy is going to come to you; in the morning, in the evening, when you least expect it. Remember what Jesus said to his disciples, “You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy and no one can take that away!” Amen.
Rev. Dan Koeshall is the senior pastor at The Metropolitan Community Church (The Met), 2633 Denver Street, San Diego, California, themetchurch.org. Services every Sunday at 9 and 11 a.m.
Loved the article