Wednesday, 7 December 2011

Choosing Joy...1Thessalonians 5:16-24

Words of Joy, as the third part of our Advent Luncheon series, December 7, 2011.

In conversation with a friend this past Monday, we reflected together on the many challenges facing ministers and the church as we seek to faithfully live out our callings in a world that is constantly changing and presenting us with paths to choose.  It left me thinking about those choices and how God leads us as the church through them in order to faithfully live out the Gospel.  For me, these choices come down to two fundamentally shifting paradigms.  We can either choose despair, or we can choose joy.  What does it mean and how does it change us when we choose joy?
                In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, he is encouraging them to do the same, in a world much like ours, where despair is rampant and can so easily shape decisions.  In the verse just before where we picked up our reading, Paul writes:  See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.  And then he says, “Rejoice always.”  So if we hold our lives and all our decisions in the light of joy, how does that shape how we make them? 
                To live in joy and rejoice in all that is does not mean to deny sorrow, hide grief or extinguish pain.  However, it does call us to live in the moment with these feelings, in the knowledge that even these feelings hold possibility.  For from Mary’s situation, which I’m sure included much fear and even grief, came a message of light and joy and changed the direction of her life and ours, forever.  These feelings hold possibility for us when we live beside each other and comfort each other as we share in our humanity.  In acknowledging that God is at the centre of this humanity, joy bubbles to the surface and surrounds us wherever we go.  The world is still tough, as it was for the early church, but we choose to live in God’s joy that cannot be extinguished by the despair of the world.  So in all of the feelings of this season, allow them to be true, encourage them to be real…do not hide who you are, in the knowledge that God’s joy will surround you.  Live in the moment and choose joy.  Amen.  

1 comment:

  1. I know it seems late, but when I came across this I was touched deeply. Knowing how to live within the tension of joy and grief is the act of letting spirit work in our midst. Thanks for the thoughtful reflection. Blessings,b

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