Happiness or Joy?

Barbara tried to keep her balance as the bus lurched forward.  She had arrived late for work and work that day was very nerve wracking.  When she got on the bus to go home, it was so crowded she had to stand.  That added to her gloominess.  While she was holding on to keep from falling into a complete stranger, she heard a deep male voice boom out, "Beautiful day, isn't?"

She could not see the speaker or the one he was speaking to but he was the only one speaking on the whole bus.  Barbara continued to hear him comment on the spring day and for the first time she realized it really was a pretty day.  The voice commented occasionally on different things they were passing by and each time her attention was drawn outside the bus and outside of herself. The man mentioned a church as they drove by and the good work they were doing in the community.  As they passed by a park, he had positive comments on it.  It happened the same way as they passed a fire station and several other landmarks. 

The speaker seemed to know something positive, something not seen on the surface, about a whole lot of things.  Barbara found herself smiling for the first time that day.  When the bus came to her stop she just had to maneuver herself so she could see her positive bus ride commentator.  He was a plump man with a black beard, wearing dark glasses and carrying a long, thin white cane.

Barbara Johnson's story reminds me that sometimes we have to see the unseen to experience the joy that is possible in life.  If happiness comes or goes according to what happens, joy comes from how we choose to look at things.  Paul calls us to "Rejoice in the Lord always."  That may mean I have to look for what is present but unseen in order to rejoice.  We will look at that passage Sunday and Paul's call to rejoice, always.  I pray we all see things we have not seen before.

for the journey...

Tim

Joy Full

Some of the most joyful people I have known have been the people most unlikely to have it.  In my days of doing ministry in prison, I can recount some men who taught me a lot about having joy.  They did not talk to me about it, they simply showed it to me while living in some pretty dire circumstances - un-air conditioned, crowded, dreary dorms living among the desperate and dangerous.

I remember one young black man from Colorado; he was one of the best worship leaders I have ever been around.  We sang everything with out any instruments except for our clapping hands.  Every time he lead us, I always experienced a very real sense of worship, largely because he seemed to express so much joy in leading us.  He was miles away from any family.  He was in prison for a very serious crime, yet he was full of joy.  What he and others taught me is that joy is a choice.  I can choose joy wherever I may be circumstantially because I have a relationship with Jesus.

Joy, like many great spiritual experiences, is more likely to be caught before it can ever be taught.  Much like C. S. Lewis said about peace, joy is also something that cannot be had and does not exist apart from God himself.  If we really follow God long enough and close enough, he will lead us to joy.  It comes second in order only to love as a fruit of the spirit in Paul's list in Galatians.

Dallas Willard said, God is, "the most joyous being in the universe."  So how much joy rubbed off on you today?  How much got shared with others?  How do we grow in it?  These are some of the things we will look at on Sunday and beyond as we look at the joy of Paul in the book of Philippians.  I would enjoy your company in it.

for the journey...

Tim

Ariel Castro and Paul

This week shocking news came from an Ohio prison cell that Ariel Castro, the man who had imprisoned and abused three young women in his home for ten years, hanged himself after one month of jail.  On the day news came out, I read this quote about Roman jails written in Christian History by John McRay:

Roman imprisonment was preceded by being stripped naked and then flogged—a humiliating, painful, and bloody ordeal. The bleeding wounds went untreated as prisoners sat in painful leg or wrist chains. Mutilated, bloodstained clothing was not replaced, even in the cold of winter.

Most cells were dark, especially the inner cells of a prison, like the one Paul and Silas inhabited in Philippi. Unbearable cold, lack of water, cramped quarters, and sickening stench from few toilets made sleeping difficult and waking hours miserable. Because of the miserable conditions, many prisoners begged for a speedy death. Others simply committed suicide.

That last line made me think of Castro and my thoughts then went back to Paul.  In that awful place, Paul and Silas were singing hymns at midnight (Acts 16).  Paul went from beaten, bleeding, powerless prisoner to saving a jailer's life in just a few minutes in the aftermath of an earthquake.  The jailer was saved from suicide and began to follow Christ.  When he writes back to the church in his letter to the Philippians, there is no gloom or darkness, but joy and love.  God had redeemed that entire situation.

Now back to Ariel Castro, he and Paul, when he was called Saul, were both guilty of imprisoning people.  Both men were people who wanted to control other people.  Castro caused the death of perhaps several unborn children in the women he held prisoner.  Saul helped cause the death of Stephen.  Saul and Castro have some things in common.  But when Castro went to jail he took his own life.  When Saul, now knowing Jesus and being called Paul, went to jail he saved a man from taking his own life and helped him find eternal life.  The two men stand in contrast to a life lived in the flesh and a life lived in the Spirit.

Everyday you and I make decisions about following the flesh or following the Spirit.  Those decisions cause us to have an impact on others and they cause us to become who we are deep down inside.  We are becoming someone who takes life or someone who, even in their darkest moments, gives life.  This week, which one have you been more like?

For the journey...

Tim

Unspeakable Joy

...though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory:  1 Peter 1:8 KJV

I saw that "unspeakable," unexplainable joy just after Christmas in 1981.  I was on a mission trip with a group of fellow college students in Matamoros, Mexico.  We were helping to build a church - spiritually and physically.  All of us had a part of the day that we worked on constructing a church building in a poor colonia on the edge of Matamoros; then we spent another part of the day surveying the spiritual interest in that colonia with a few Spanish phrases we were taught.

My team of three came up to a house and greeted the woman outside, she warmly welcomed us into her little home where  we met her grown daughter and her very sick grandchild.  She wanted us to pray for her grandchild but first the daughter told us her story.  I could gleam a word or two to get the gist of what she was saying and she would help  us out with an English phrase or two that she knew.

They were all Christians.  The child was given very little hope of living much longer.  The child and his mother had just moved there because the husband could not handle his child's illness and had left them.  It was a very sad story but all the time this young mother told us this, there was this incredible expression of joy on her  face, even through her tears.  She kept looking up as she spoke, her large brown eyes seemed to point to a higher place that that little, poor home.   I will never forget it.  We choked out a few prayers between us over the sick child, each of us taking turns as someone who had been praying got choked up.  We said our goodbyes and left information about the new church and took their names and the address for the colonia pastor.

We got out in the street, dried our eyes and talked about what we had just experienced - joy, in the middle of one of the saddest things I had ever seen.  Everyone on that team remarked about how we had just seen something we had never seen before.  There was such an expression of joy on her face even through her tears and even in her circumstances.

That evening our team tried to share what we had experienced during our mission team share time.  None of us could get through it without crying.  I am sure no one else really understood what we had seen but it did not change the fact that we had seen it.  It really was an "inexpressible" joy.

All of us would like to have that kind of joy.  None of us want the kind of circumstances that family was going through.  But perhaps that is where joy -this kind of joy that Peter was talking about - can best be seen and known, in places where it would not seem possible.

Sunday, we will look at the joy that is possible where ever we are, no matter what we are going through because it comes from Jesus.  Pray for me as we seek to understand this unspeakable joy.

For the journey...

Tim