This past week, I asked you to spend time thinking about, and practicing, joy. For as we know, joy comes in all shapes and sizes. From a free ice cream, to a posture of joyful appreciation while driving, joy can manifests itself when we least expect it. But when Joy comes, we find we need that feeling, or that response, desperately. So let’s not leave joy behind, or allow the starting of another week to diminish ‘JOY’ in us! Can we find a way to continue being joyful?? I think that it is important to continue reflecting on the choices and practice where joy is not just the proper response, but even the response we desperately crave.
Margaret Wheatley, in a human resource article entitled, "When Change is Out of Control," wrote:
"It is possible to prepare for the future without knowing what it will be.
The primary way to prepare for the unknown is to attend to the quality of our relationships,
to how well we know and trust one another. "
As I think about it, one of the greatest tools we use to limit joy, and there are many that we could select from our toolbox, is the fear of the unknown. That fear brings a ‘practicality’ to our mind instead of the passion of joy. This fear says things like, “well I know that you want to be joyful, but is this right moment, the right instance, the right response. . . “ On and on we go justifying why we could practice joy, but why we shouldn’t practice joy in this instance.
It seems to me that while covid-19 has taken so much away from us right now relationally, and how we cannot share a physical space as the church, what it has not touched, and cannot touch, is the ability to praise God joyfully what what we have and who is in our sphere of relationships. There are quality relationships we have—if we nurture them. . . There are people we love and support and trust—if we reach out to them in our time of need. We will say that we trust those relationships, but why then don’t we reach out to them when covid-19 is inviting us to stop being joyful?
I wonder what it would look like today, right now as you read this article, if what Wheatley is speaking about becomes something that you can adopt and apply? What would it look like to seek out those types of relationships, and I know that you have them, now? We don’t have to have everything planned out or determined before we are able to be joyful. So for today, let’s try to look at things as Wheatley suggests. . .
Blessings
Rev. Derek
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