Joy is walking on a road, not really a "place" so much as it's a process.
Found this beautiful
photograph of a road, and though the title is "long road to ruin," I'll just swap in "joy" for "ruin". Thinking about what joy even means. Or, what it means to "enjoy God". Or, "What 's one way I can enjoy God more this year?"
EN-JOY. To be "in joy"? To exist in joy like fish exist in water, swimming, immersed in it, breathing it in and out, moving through it, buoyed by it...?
In the Old Testament, water is used as a metaphor for helplessness.
Wine, on the other hand, is a metaphor for joy.
The familiar story, out of John 2, where Jesus turns the water into wine, was the topic of the sermon at Grace yesterday. The point was that famous quote from Mary: "whatever He says, do it...." or, the road to joy means doing what Jesus says. I like to think that it's also a metaphor for my life: that Christ turns helplessness into joy.
Jesus was a joyful person, someone that others wanted around...I mean, he was invited to that wedding in Cana, right? He wasn't sitting in the corner, quietly judging all the guests partying...he didn't even make a stink about there being *gasp*
alcohol at the wedding. In fact, the first miracle he performed, how he "showed his glory," was in creating more wine when the host had run out, keeping the party going.
It's an interesting thing, thinking about how to be "joyful". On one hand, you could just drink a lot of wine...but there's something about that just rings hollow without a deep and abiding inner sense of joy. So, just drowning my stresses and sorrows in literal wine isn't the solution. Probably wouldn't hurt, though.
The thing about joy is that its becoming more about awareness for me. Awareness of what I have, awareness of the good...and the not-so-good. Awareness of my own utter helplessness...of my own meanness, smallness, of my own inner "judger", that super-easy talent I have for thinking I'm right and everyone else just doesn't get it and so I point the finger at them and ignore my own shortcomings (gladly!). Hyprocrite-me. This kind of awareness might seem self-flagellating or morbid. On the contrary, I say. If no one had called attention to the fact that there was no wine, that there was only water, then maybe nothing would have happened. Noticing that there's only water in my life presents the opportunity for a miraculous transformation; for Jesus to turn water into wine. Helplessness to joy. Awareness of that exchange, dwelling on it, in it, swimming around in the realization of that miracle is...bright and full and awesome and overwhelming--like being swallowed in warmth and light after hours in the frigid cold without a coat. The prickly hurty delicious pain comes, the pain that means you are thawing, and you can breathe. Seemingly for the first time, you fill your lungs with warm, bright air. And that may be a way to enjoy God.
