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| “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.” ― |
It has been a challenge to find joy lately, if I may be so honest.
My heart hurts for just about everyone and everything in the world right now. No matter how hard I try to keep away from the news, a privilege I’m well aware of, it seeps into my life, and I get distracted…and angered…and saddened.
The weight of it all gets to be too much sometimes.
Sometimes I want to go find joy. I want to create my happiness. I want to put myself in front of joy’s parade and wave to her as she drives by. I want to sing the song, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart….”
But…
Sometimes the very act of looking for joy makes me miss it. Which makes sense, considering the psalmist speaks to how “though weeping may last through the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Joy is a follower. It followed God’s people back to Jerusalem after their long stint in exile. The joy of resurrection came only after Christ’s death. The joy of the new creation comes only after we confess the ways we separate ourselves from God, neighbor, and ourselves.
Joy is a tag-along, like me, with my older brothers growing up. Joy doesn’t merely sit somewhere waiting to get plucked up like a daisy. Don’t bother searching for happiness. Instead, be ready for it.
Be open to joy.
I think I saw joy this morning. And like suggested above, it came after I got out of my own pity-party and looked up. Literally, I looked up from the news article I was reading on my computer and out my window. That’s when I saw joy:
A robin, splish-splashing in my dog’s water bowl.
It was beautiful. It was simple. It was joyful. The robin bathed for probably 5 minutes—splashing, swimming, and I’d like to think, playing. I’m not sure why, but it made my heart happy, and I felt joy. In a moment of overwhelming sadness and frustration, I became happy because of a robin swimming in my dog’s water bowl.
It makes me wonder how my days might change if I adopt the attitude that happiness can be a heartbeat away even when we’re drowning in grief and misery.
As this plump robin bathed, pushing water out of the bowl and sending drops flying each time she fluttered her feathers, I thought of something else that brings us joy.
My baptism.
You guessed it, as this bird bathed, which she does to loosen the dirt and makes their feathers easier to preen, I remembered how, through the gift of baptism, God has embraced me as God’s own and made me on in Christ’s body.
The same is true for all of us. In our baptisms, we are united in Christ’s resurrection and become a new creation.
The joy in this comes not from anything we’ve done, but tags along behind the grace of God poured out onto us daily.
It’s up to us to pay attention and open ourselves up to joy.
When we do, we will see it unexpectedly—like in a dog’s water bowl splashing in the summer sun, inviting us to remember that nothing will ever sperate from the love of God.
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