The gift of joy
Shortly before he died Jesus gathered his disciples together to say goodbye. He said to them, “Everything I’ve done and said has been so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete. It’s all for joy.”
The road Jesus and his friends have been walking as they’ve traipsed around the countryside is the road to joy. Trouble with the disciples is they don’t always know or act like they know that they are on the road to joy. I have the same trouble. I don’t always remember that as a follower of Jesus I am on the road to joy.
What is joy?
We’ll start with peace. There is such a thing as unshakeable inner peace. I am not there, but inner peace is possible. Inner peace doesn’t mean that you don’t get sad or angry or that you’re walking around happy all the time. A person who has the gift of unshakable inner peace is grounded in joy.
Joy is the gift of a vivid realization that there is nothing missing in this moment no matter what the moment holds. The gift of joy is mysterious and the person who has it doesn’t know exactly why they don’t feel defeated by bad things. All they know is they feel buoyant and held by a powerful love that can only have come from God.
Joy is an active, ongoing awareness that life is a gift and life is short and we are here to love. Legacy is an illusion and love is all that matters. To be grounded in that worldview is the mysterious gift of joy.
Thus, with joy in place there is a certain irrelevance to all outcomes because no matter the weather, no matter who wins the contest, what the diagnosis, how long or short the life, how good or bad the feeling your call is the same - to love and be loved because you are God’s beloved.
You can’t make the gift of joy happen, but you can assume an inner posture of openness to the gift. We can stop trying to wrestle happiness and satisfaction out of exterior things and instead place all our hope in God.
Now that doesn’t mean you become some pious, boring, church mouse. Because what happens when I surrender is that I am almost immediately turned back to everything that I have let go of and now I love all of it with God.
Inner peace grounded in joy doesn’t mean that you don’t have feelings. Feelings are fun - I love feeling sad, and angry, and flummoxed and happy and grouchy and bored and silly. Feelings are the salt and pepper of life. They spice things up. It’s just that when I am grounded in the gift of joy, I can feel all of them and not be crushed or carried away by them.
A person grounded in the gift of joy doesn’t need to change anything about even the worst moment because all their needs are met in the infinity of God’s love as it pours into their life from the inside.
So, they smile without reason because none is needed when you’ve got the gift of joy.