Joy

Deep in the book of Galatians, the Apostle Paul asked his people a pointed question, “What has happened to your joy?” He asked the question because he wanted them to see that something was amiss in their lives. For me, when I lose joy, I know something is deeply amiss in my life. Joy seems to be, for me, an index of my soul that lets me know if I am leaning into God’s friendship or floating along on my own wisdom or the wisdom of the world. I looked back at my journals recently and noticed that the last four years have been the longest, most protracted fight for joy in my life. But, fight we must.My greatest discovery about joy is that it is not like happiness, which seems to be circumstantial. “I shot an 81 today on the golf course!” “We are leaving for vacation tomorrow.” “My ash bucket for my Kamado Joe just came in and it has changed my grilling life!” “My child just got a huge scholarship.” Pick your poison, we all have things that, if circumstances fall out just right, make us giddy with happiness. Joy, on the other hand, is not dependent on circumstances at all. You can have joy even when you are weeping. Jesus is the greatest case in point. He was always weeping. He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. He actually put himself in the way of sorrow, as he seemed to always reach out to the broken and desperate. It doesn’t make you giddy with happiness when you are around hurting people, and yet…Jesus was a man of joy. He didn’t take a gloomy, weight-of-the-world-on-my-shoulders demeanor into the world in which he lived. His first miracle was to bring joy to a new level. He was always being asked to parties. He was even called a glutton and a wine-bibber. Jesus loved to be at parties. And, what’s more, he was obviously the life of the party or he wouldn’t have kept getting invites!I have lived long enough now to have been at the bottom, where nothing looked like it would ever be right again. At times, I have railed at God, “God, I want my life back!” I have said to God, “Why me?” I have asked God for certainties in life that he refuses to let me rest in. Is there joy for us in those times? Or, is there joy to be found if, all of the sudden, you find yourself in chronic pain? Or what about death…If you live long enough, you lose the people you love. What about then?I am not trying to be morbid, but I am trying to ask the question, does the anchor hold when we are in our deepest distress? Because here is the thing about joy: it is remarkable. While happiness is dependent on something happening to us, joy is the result of something happening in us. Joy is not dependent on circumstances at all and actually can thrive in difficult situations. Happiness is more of a feeling; joy in an attitude, a posture, a place we indwell. Joy is a deep, settled confidence that God is in control of life. It is also a Fruit of the Spirit, which means God has to give it to you. It is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. And yet the Apostle Paul commands us to have joy, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4) It’s as if he is saying it is a choice. Joy is a choice.Tim Hansel wrote a book I read years ago that I keep going back to when I lose my joy. It is called, You Gotta Keep Dancin.’ My dog-eared, marked-up, tear-stained, used-up copy has long disappeared, loaned out long ago to another desperate soul looking for joy and never returned. I purchased another copy on Google books a few years ago and found out, to my horror, it was a facsimile! And yet, as I read through it, it was the same wise stuff. Tim Hansel had an accident and lived in chronic pain, and it drove him to ponder joy in a new way. He says this, “Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional. We cannot avoid pain, but we can avoid joy. God has given us such immense freedom that he will allow us to be a miserable as we want to be.”This became painfully real to me years ago, when I was weeping. I couldn’t fix someone I loved. The pain was blinding. I wondered how anyone could get through it. Then I realized––I was weeping, yet God was still in control. He often uses pain as his megaphone to rouse a sleeping world. I realized I couldn’t wait for this situation to remedy itself for me to have joy. If I did, I would sink everyone around me that I loved. “Pain is inevitable, but misery is optional.” I had to choose joy. Not easily, not always, not evenly. There were days of being buried in the lament Psalms. But in the weeping, I realized, as Psalm 126 says, there is still seed to be sown; there is the next right thing to do; there is a God who says he will sanctify our deepest distress. As I forgot myself and my misery and looked long and hard at the way God had worked in my life, it dawned on me that anything I had was because of grace. And then, when I looked at the future before me—joy was there. It was often through a veil of tears but it was there, because of God’s never-stopping love for me and his people. We really do “see the world the way we are.” None of us are objective. We bring our pain, hurt, or loss to the world and all looks bleak, or we fight for joy and can see the world with wonder and possibility. I think joy then is a consequence of faith, love, and obedience. The more we dwell on our misery, the more deeply unhappy we are. Conversely, the more we lose ourselves in obedience, regardless of our feelings, and  believe the promises––working them down past the cultural liturgies that grip our hearts and clinging to them in faith––the more we experience true joy, often when we least expect it. We do, after all, serve a God who says he is making all things new!