Encouragement

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Someone asked me the other day, “Are you happy?” A flat smile. The head nod. “Yes,” answered. It wasn’t the time to say that I’d given happiness away to dreams long dead, long ago. There are things that would actually make me happy, but God’s ways are always higher. And deeper.

As happy slipped into the grave with personal tragedy years ago, something very unexpected rose up. Joy. JOY. A burning and brilliant resurrected life -- a life really lived all out for Him and abiding in Him now abounds because everything else has perished. It’s not about the stuff. Or the comforts. Or even the dreams. It’s about the living God. And He is all about His Life overwhelming death and glory light blinding the blackness.

Only in the dark depths of hard places did I discover joy. Joy’s fire became enflamed into Christ-filled strength and glorious radiance when life pressed happiness into a hopeless corner, stripped away all the peripherals, and took me to a place that was beyond myself. Beyond my Self.

Before that “grave” my life was a typically happy Christian montage of Bible studies and Sunday School serving and loving Jesus in the shallow end of the pool (as it were). All good. Sincere. Wholehearted. Self didn’t seem to be the focus of that life, but wow. When Jesus, with cross-nearing breaths, spoke promised joy to those who abide in Him, it beautifully and powerfully foreshadowed the cost. And the real power of the promise.

So while I face significant and perplexing struggles nearly every day, most of them the fallout of that long ago grave tragedy, JOY stands in awe of an amazing life beyond those wading pool dreams. The Kingdom doors that have opened don’t qualify as happy -- just pricelessly, imperishably more. Joy is being right in the middle of His purposes, His broken-hearted ones, and the messy lives He is passionately redeeming. Only after descending into the gritty darknesses was I transformed to not simply be in step with Him, but pressing hard into the places He is most needed with greater grace and deeper joy. Happy tightly wraps arms around itSelf, but joy widely embraces God and others and all the untouchable treasures of life.

My prayer for others is that when life throws you down to the ground and stomps all over your "happy" that you will discover in that moment something that is far more than happy. Joy is Jesus right in the middle of that moment, whether a seemingly unending season of moments or the next sixty seconds of simply catching your breath. He is with you. And He is amazingly good.

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