The Easter Season is meant to be a joyful time for us as Christians and springtime also brings many joys to be savored that echo the beauty of new life as we watch the play of colors begin to emerge in our gardens and flowering trees as well as listen to the songs of the birds and feel the warmth of the sunshine. I think we have been uplifted during Lent and Easter with the sharing of good news with one another. We all need that in times such as these. I understand that as our lives unfold, one of the great challenges is to continue to seek out joy when we may be faced with personal or family challenges or when our hearts take in hard news from friends or across our world. It is one of the important tasks of life to be able to find a balance between honoring sorrow and celebrating joy, isn’t it? Even when life can be hard, God graces us with small joys each day. And we are invited to consider how we may best be attentive so that our joy is not overshadowed by suffering or anxiety or pain. It is no surprise that the great Christian story tells us that new life emerged after suffering and death. Jesus died and then appeared to his friends to reassure them of his presence and love even when he would no longer be with them. Today, I want to share just a few thoughts on joy…
—Jan Richardson, poet, artist, and Methodist minister writes, “These days I find myself curious about what it means to approach joy as a practice, and to receive it as a grace that God offers. . . . I have been pondering how practicing joy involves asking for it, preparing a place for it, praying to be open to it so that we can recognize it when it appears.”
And the inspiring writer and speaker Kate Bowler has recently released a new book entitled, Joyful Anyway. She recently reflected, “One of the questions that keeps coming up when I meet folks on tour is this: “How can we be joyful now—when everything feels like it’s coming apart at the seams? And I get it. I really, really do. Because it does feel like that. Personally. Globally. Spiritually. There’s so much that feels fragile or overwhelming or just… too much to carry.
And I guess that is why it has been both tricky to be talking about joy right now and deeply, deeply necessary. Because joy does not wait for everything to get better. It is not the reward for a fixed life. Joy, in its very nature, can coexist with sorrow and suffering of all kinds. (This is what makes it different from happiness.) And not only that, I’ve experienced how it sustains you through hard seasons. Tiny moments of more-than-okayness that carry you through.
So when people ask, “what does joy even look like now ,I feel the weight of that. During an interview for her podicast, she spoke with Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sarah Bessey. Nadia Bolz-Weber is a Lutheran pastor, (the founder of House for All Sinners and Saints, and the bestselling author of Pastrix and Shameless.) And Sarah Bessey is an author and speaker. (the bestselling author of Field Notes for the Wilderness and Jesus Feminist, a speaker, co-founder of Evolving Faith, and an author.) And Sarah said: “You don’t always get to change the world, but you do get to love it.”
Kate continued, “ I keep coming back to that—especially in moments when everything feels overwhelming or out of my control. Because it shifts my attention from everything I can’t change to what I’ve actually been tasked to love. Not in a vague or sentimental way—but in ways that are small and specific and embodied.
Showing up. Making meals. Sitting with people. Doing the next kind thing.
This won’t solve the world’s most pressing problems. But it does change how we live inside it. And maybe that’s closer to what the experience of joy actually is—not a feeling we achieve, but a way of staying connected to what is still good, still human, still worth loving. Because despair is loud right now. It keeps telling us that nothing we do matters. But loving the world—this particular, complicated, gorgeous, often heartbreaking world—is a way of refusing exactly that.
A Blessing for Joy
Blessed are you who are tired of the world as it is, looking for a little light. Blessed are you who are willing to take a moment—to look, to laugh, to breathe—and to receive the gift of joy that is new every morning. May you feel the delight of God in your life, even in the smallest of things. May you feel the warmth of gratitude, replacing the weight of worry. When the days feel long and gray, may joy bubble up in unexpected places, turning your mourning into dancing. And for today, may you know that you are more than a list of problems to solve, but a quiet study of wonder, meant to enjoy this life. May you watch yourself come back to life, and may that joy be your strength. Kate Bowler
-(Love the world, anyway. On small faith, ordinary love, and refusing despair Kate Bowler, April 22)