Joy

Joy is a funny thing. Joy is not happiness. joy is not a feeling. It is an understanding of our position in Christ. It is the place that we are able to be even when the world is crumbling around us Perhaps, joy is one of the hardest parts of following Christ to understand. A friend of mine shared this verse as written by Paul to the Corinthians:

"Our hearts ache, but we always have joy. We are poor, but we give spiritual riches to others. We own nothing, and yet we have everything."

This is the perfect picture of joy. Our hearts may be broken but in the midst of it all we understand who took our sins and washed us clean. If we can come to terms with who are Savior is then how can we do anything less than press on toward the prize to which we are called in Christ Jesus.

Joy is not a position of power. In contrast it is understanding we are a hopeless mess and yet we are redeemed. It is easy when God is silent to believe that God has left us. Like Job's friends it is easy to believe that we have just messed up to a point where God would want to crush us and bring us low. Job never understood the why. But, he did understand two things, that his own righteousness did not protect him from a fallen world and that God must have a reason for everything. Joy is not being poor or rich, it is about living out of a place of putting Christ in front of us.

We have nothing yet, we have everything. Joy is understanding that there is nothing in this world worth holding on to, but we have joy we hope in Christ and that means that we have everything..

The weight of this world can crush us if we let it. The stories of the families I work with hurt my soul. Children in our own back yard who are without. Our own grief of attempting to struggle under the weight of this fallen place. Left to our own devices none of us will ever be good enough. No not one of us. We would live a life bowed over by our regrets. I cshould of... I could of.... Yet, joy is knowing that I don't have to. My Lord erases all of that.

I may never comprehend the fullness of joy. More often than not I am coming to understand God's ways not being my ways and his thoughts being bigger than mine. Honestly, I need it that way. For I may not always understand the bad, but I am so unworthy of the good.

I simply pray that in our joy as we bear our heart ache we continue to look out, around, into and through the eyes of our Lord. Then we might really see the world for what it is....