Joy is…

My bottom was starting to get sore as I sat on the gym floor.  My wife was sick.  My daughter and I had forgotten our blanket so we were sitting on our coats.

Correction.  I was sitting on my coat by myself.

My daughter didn’t like the idea of sitting on her coat so she was sitting up front on a blanket with other kids in her class.  So I was sitting there on my coat in a dark gym and my bottom was now officially sore.  Kid’s were getting restless waiting for the talking to be over and the eating of Christmas cookies to start.  And it was at this point that something grabbed me. (And I don’t mean that it grabbed my rear!)

“Let’s say this together,” the guy up front said.

And all the kids said, “Joy is finding a way to be happy even when things don’t go my way…”

Now despite my sore rear-end and the fact that it seemed trite at first, it grabbed me.  “Even when things don’t go my way…”, huh?  And then we moved onto read Phillipians 4:4,

Rejoice in the Lord always.

I will say it again: Rejoice!

I realized that as much as I talk about Jesus, many times my level of joy is based on what is going on in my life at that point in time.

Later in the week, Sara and I focused our family worship on joy and again, I was struck that it’s hard to have joy in this world.  As Matthew Jacoby writes in his book Deeper Places,

…in a world that lacks the joy of God, the expression of joy is inevitably arrested by the suffering of humanity…The greater our joy, the greater our sadness for those who lack such joy…Only in the new heavens and new earth can joy be unleashed from this burden.

It’s true isn’t it.  Our joy can be stopped in it’s tracks by pain and suffering.  It’s not easy.  So we prayed together as a family,

…Strengthen our hearts to believe your advent promise
that one day we will walk in the holy way of Christ,
where sorrow and sighing will be no more…

And we all grabbed shakers, jingle bells and a ukulele to sing “Joy to the World” which is an Advent song looking forward to the Advent promise of Christ coming again.  When sorrow and sighing are no more…

I’m looking forward to that day when my joy can be unleashed.  Until then, I’m going to sing “Joy to the World”, eat cookies, pray, serve, trust because those are all ways to find joy

…even when things don’t go my way.

**Again, if you want to experience our family worship on Joy, go to my wife’s blog, Poets & Saints.