It's so amazing (by which I mean: incredible, relieving, and slightly hilarious) how, no matter how bad things seem to get, no matter how big a mess I feel like I am, God can bring along just the right encouragement at just the right time. I love it so much. What I don't love, though, is that I always seem to forget.
I forget every time that God has come through for me, and all the wonderful times I've had because of his encouragement. The only thing I can see is the emptiness in front of me. I haven't yet learned how to carry those moments with me, so that I might bridge the chasms of despair in front of me with God's amazing blessings. Oh, to bring along all that joy, to store it in a bottle or a box, or stick it in a backpack for a rainy day.
I mean, there are those poetic rainy days, those days when all you want to do is dance in the rain, bask in it. But then there are those times when the rain might as well be made of smoke, because it makes everything gloomy. Life is the same way. Sometimes the joy in our sorrows is immediately apparent, like the death of a godly man or woman that inspires us because of the way they lived their life, and the fact that it reminds us of the incredible joy that we will all share when we reach heaven and celebrate together again. But there are also those times when the gloom of the clouds feels like the only thing that is true, and every little ache in our heart is magnified a thousand times, while joy feels as far away as a sunny summer afternoon feels during a snowstorm.
This is why we have to learn to carry the sunny days in our pockets. If only it were as easy to do as it is to say. Our minds are a sieve when it comes to certain things, and while a piece of paper may carry the words that can inspire us to remember the joy we left behind, sometimes it doesn't work if our mind is too clouded by pain to remember, and the words are just words.
Maybe we need more than just one piece of paper.
As the kid president in the video said, "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled...and it hurt, man!" And so we need to somehow overwhelm the pain of everyday life with joy. But where?
John Eldredge says of the days after his close friend Brent was killed in a climbing accident, "As the shock of Brent's death began to wear off, the searing pain of intense grief took is place. It was too difficult to read my Bible. Conversation required more than I was able to give. Frankly, I didn't want to talk to anyone, not even God. The only thing that helped was my wife's flower garden. The solace I found there was like nothing else on earth....beauty and affliction are the only two things that can pierce our hearts. Because this is so true, we must have a measure of beauty in our lives proportionate to our affliction. No, more. Much more. Is this not God's prescription? Just take a look around. The sights and sounds, the aromas and sensations--the world is overflowing with beauty. God seems to be rather enamored with it. Gloriously wasteful. Apparently, he feels that there ought to be plenty of it in our lives."
That last line hit me pretty seriously when I thought about it. I don't even try to make room for joy in my life. Oh, wait...unless you count all the imposters I make room for in my day. I think this is part of the reason that all of us have some kind of addiction to some thing, activity, thought process, hobby, job, whatever it is. We can't find the peace and happiness we want in our life, and naturally we have to find a substitute, or else kill our urge to find it, which is equally dangerous. This hunger for joy is a hole left unfilled because God is not fully present in our world, and so a part of our soul is still disconnected from him, unless we come to him intentionally, seek his joy in the world instead of cheap substitutes. But it's hard. So hard.
And I know firsthand what can happen if there is nothing at all substantial to fill that emptiness. The times when I don't make any effort at all to reach for God are the most gloomy and miserable times of my life. The worst part is, the longer I spend in that place, the less I even want to reach out to Jesus, because it's so hard when your thought process has been twisted into the wrong shape. It's like having a bad back and no chiropractor; I can't stand up, and although I might be able to get to the car to drive to the chiropractor if I did make the effort to stand up, the back pain is so undesirable that I don't want to try. I'd rather lie in relative relief on the bed. The problem is, eventually you need food and water.
Thank God, God leaves so much beauty for us in this world. I think everyone should spend at least one day out of the month and take a nice long walk and admire nature and just think about the fact that God made it. Not only that, he made it for us. When all was said and done, God put man in charge of all the other creations, one of the best engagement presents ever. We screwed up afterwards, but the point remains that this world, despite its fallen and faded state, is still a stunning reminder of how much he loves us, enough to gift us this incredibly complex, impossibly beautiful place we call home.
Pick a sunny day, when it's warm but not too hot, preferably, and find a place with plenty of trees. A local lake, maybe, or possibly a nearby forest or walking trail. Just walk. Walk, and look. Admire. Let go of everything else, don't feel the need to do anything. Breathe a bit. Maybe take some calm music along, but don't keep it on the entire time. Or whatever works for you, really. A walk in the city can reveal many things too. The intelligence that God gave us shown in the ingenuity of architecture, or God's incredible skill and artistic spirit in inventing colors. The Trinity's communal laughter echoing back through friends at a coffee shop, or a couple walking down the street. And one stop in a restaurant or ice cream shop will reveal without a doubt that God was a genius to invent flavor.
The point is, there is beauty in every single inch of this planet, even in the artificial, as long as we have our eyes open. And simply enjoying this beauty is a form of worship that is totally different than any other kind we have available.
And like the kid president said, create! Doesn't matter what. It could be words, it could be pictures, it could be sounds or tastes or an encouraging word or a hug or a million other things. Think of something positive that people do, and that is another way that you can create and give back to others. And if nothing else, you are giving back to God, which is yet another form of worship.
The mindset that allows for the pure unadulterated consumption of joy and creation of new things is hard to come by, but if more of us start seizing it when it comes, it makes things less gloomy. Sometimes we forget to carry our joy with us, but there is an abundant source all around us and even within us, so long as we remember the Source. And we can't be ashamed of enjoying the joy God puts in life all around us, so long as we remember that doing so is and should be treated as a way to worship him. It's healthy, and it's a way to find our way back to God when we are lost.
You can't get fat on joy, so look for it everywhere. It may just be what you need to get through something hard one day.
