The Miracle Working Power of J O Y
~ A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.~ Proverbs 17:22
If I’m being honest, most of my life, joy has been a warm fuzzy descriptor, available to the few who dare to live in places so far beyond my personal comfort zone, I might only ever touch it momentarily. I’ve had so many deep seated beliefs concerning joy, I only recently uncovered them through my own practice of forgiveness. I can’t say I have any distinct moments of joy to reference in my youth, though, I wouldn’t say joy was entirely eliminated from the conversation.
Picture it. 1990…something. A room full of bored, attention deficit, hormonal teenagers, attending a youth service because a) that’s where young people hang out on a Wednesday night (sarcasm) and b) our parents said it was this or stay home.
We sat, without cell phones (gasp), and with glazed over eyes, pretended to be interested in what our youth pastor had to say. The evening would have been entirely forgettable, except this man decided, in a moment of lunacy, to tell us all to stand up (which we slowly did) and then proceeded to forcefully coax us to “jump for joy”. Apparently, and I had I been listening I might have known, he had been leading up to this the whole time. Joy. He wanted us to jump for it. Can I just say, that absolutely no one is further from joy than an angsty teenager being forced to do something against their will? Now maybe you’re thinking…he couldn’t MAKE you, but the chiding for not jumping was soon to follow for those who stood still. It was…humiliating and so far from what I’m sure he had hoped we would “grab hold of” that evening. As soon as it was over, we left the building as fast as possible and no one ever spoke of the night we were pressured into “jumping for joy”…ever.
The story is hilarious, ridiculous, and nearly unbelievable, but, too accurate a metaphor for how I myself, and so many people have been shown the path to joy. It’s either drug induced, bliss-chasing, clothing-optional, free-love, pretending authenticity is saying whatever comes to your mind, shock-factor masked as liberation kind of chaos, or just beyond your reach, grab it if you can, forced, momentary, get-out-of-your comfort-zone antics.