Each time I’ve sat down to reflect on joy this season, I’ve been forced to face just how disconnected I’ve become from living a joy filled life.
I blame adulthood, but I know it’s much more complex than that. Perhaps it’s not so much adulthood, but the constant preoccupation that tends to accompany adulthood. The responsibilities feel never ceasing and a lack of organization has me constantly feeling that I’ve forgotten something terribly important. I do miss the carefree spirit that often accompanies childhood and that we so often perceive as joy. Children are some of the very best examples I know when it comes to presence in the moment and thus perhaps they are more predisposed to joy filled moments.
Joy is often reduced to a synonym of happiness, but it would seem that these two are not interchangeable. While happiness is a feeling that often goes as quickly as it comes and is very conditional on the proper circumstances, joy is everlasting and it doesn’t bolt at the sight of unfavorable circumstance.
I came across these words by Brandon Andress. And the way that he describes joy, struck me in a new way. He writes,
“Joy is a piercing in the thin veil where heaven and earth come together. It is a present taste of that which will be fully and completely realized in the future. It is an awakening to the resident goodness of all things. It is shalom. You can see it. You can feel it. You can hear it. You can taste it. And you know it is good. And you long for it, not in fleeting, transient moments, but in perpetuity.”
This definition so beautifully touches on the mystery of joy. (Really it captures the heart of Advent itself.) But this understanding of joy is the delight we take in the rightness of things. This can take on endless forms. The color that perfectly suits the cardinal. The aroma of something baked with love. The trill of a songbird. The texture of soft, cool grass between toes. The words that mean just what the heart longs to say. The unstoppable laughter that bubbles up. The playfulness children bring out in adults. The promise that even in the midst of darkness light will prevail.
Joy is the delight we feel when heaven meets earth. And when we happen to be present enough to experience it. This is where we take our cues from the children. We must learn to give ourselves to the moment we’re in, not in a pagan, hedonistic sense. But with the recognition that if we allow ourselves to constantly be in different places in mind, body and spirit, we will not be able to delight in those beautiful moments of joy when heaven pierces the veil.
May our eyes and hearts seek to discover this sort of joy this season.
