Re-joice Part 1

re·joice  rəˈjois/verb ~ feel or show great joy or delight.

What are you feeling right now?  In this very moment are you sensing the stirring of the sacred or perhaps some sadness or numbness or nothingness?  Our emotions are fickle and fragile.  One moment we can be in the valley...the next whisked away to the mountains....only to encounter or experience something that takes us back to the depth.

Is the point of life to be on a level plateau...never too high or too low?  Weathering what wanders our way?

Is the point of life to ride the roller coaster of letting everything push/pull us one direction or another?

Or is the point something a bit deeper and more complex?

Because maybe joy doesn't come only from outside but also inside us.

Maybe joy is a kind of fuel that feeds us...gift of God's grace...but also something if we are alert we can train ourselves to see and sense.

Think of it this way...since 2001 we have been taught that if, "You see something, say something" with respect to suspicious behavior.  What if that was also a way to live our life with joy too.  If I see the tree swaying in the wind...hear the water gently cascading down...the pool ball floating aimlessly on the surface...feel the breeze or hear the laughter.  I am not saying that it is either/or ~ it is both/and.  There is tremendous brokenness and indescribable blessedness in this life.  To be comfortable with the paradox or messy middle of those two twin truths is where I invite you to prayerfully take up residence this week.

Yes...some leader will do something that breaks our hearts this week.

Yes...some person will made headlines hurting someone else.

Yes...some mother will go to work and take care of her kid.

Yes...some family will sit down to dinner, put down their phones...and actually talk to each other.

Yes...someone will fall in love.

Yes...someone will die.

Yes...someone will sit down on a lanai and post to a blog helping us all try to be open to the traces of God's grace.

What do you feel?

Where is the joy...go toward that today.

Blessings ~~