Daily Bread

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

As I read this passage, it occurred to me that I'm not sure I ever consider God as having joy and being, fundamentally, joyful. I wonder if it is because of Bible teaching that we must 'revere' and 'fear' God, and that adjectives such as 'powerful' and 'omnipotent' paint a picture of a God who, despite being loving and merciful, is also pretty straight-faced and unemotional! But... here we have it written in black and white. God is joyful and longs for us to be joyful.

Joy is one of those states I wonder if I have ever truly felt, and so I feel a little bit of a fraud writing about it but will give it my best shot. Sure, we talk about the feeling of happiness all the time, but joy is something else. Divine joy, like peace, can be prefixed with the word 'inner'. We can experience inner peace and inner joy — and both transcend mere calm and happiness — and when we have joy, it also transcends our circumstances.

I remember an old lady — a friend — whose name was Nell. Nell had, what I would describe as joy. She loved God with all her heart and she radiated an inner-joy that she clearly experienced. She delighted in the simplest of things, and towards the end of her life when she was no longer mobile, she joyfully plucked up flowering grasses from her seat on the lawn, and to admire their beauty, placed them in glass water-filled jars. In the short time I knew her, I don't think I once heard Nell grumble. Her smile would light up a room and also the hearts of those present. Without a doubt, Nell had joy.

I long for both inner-peace and inner-joy, and perhaps it will take me a lifetime to discover how to experience both, but I hope and pray that when I get to the end of my life, that I too have a radiant love for the Lord and a twinkle in my eye, just as Nell did.

Holy God
Thank you for loving me
and for your desire for me to be joyful.
Help me stop and take delight
in the smallest of blessings,
and today, may I radiate the warmth
of your love, joy, and peace
to all I encounter.