"Counting It All Joy"
2. “God—Joy; in the Same Sentence?”
Psalm 5:1-12
First Presbyterian Church
The Reverend Donald Ray
Sunday, July 1, 2007
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I did something
scary about a month ago. I went up to our attic.
Yes, there’s more
stuff in our attic than there ought to be. But, it’s an attic and I seem
to get up there rather often so I’m kind of used to that. The ghosts in our
attic are what made this particular trip scary. My purpose for going up
was to search them out and face them. By ghosts I don’t mean apparitions
of people who once lived through some haunting tragedy in the house who now move
stuff around and make things go bump in the night—though sometimes I think we
may have a few of those, too.
The ghosts I went to
confront are very real. They are in spiral bound notebooks I used to journal
some 20 years ago. It was at that painful time when my marriage and family
broke apart. On those pages are the record of my daily and mostly late
night thoughts and feelings.
I went looking for
the ghosts because our summer focus on joy makes this is a good time to exorcise
them, but more importantly, because I knew
in those journals are also some kinder, gentler spirits responsible for the
shaping of my life as I lived through those days.
Sometime during that
era of my life, I read of a meditation practice used by Paul Tournier.
Tournier, a general practitioner in
In the state of my
life at the time, when I had a ton of questions for God, I began using this as
part of my own efforts at meditation. On one of those respites in my
journal notebook I wrote; “Do you believe I want joy for you?” as God’s
question for me.
The question jolted
me to attention and I realized my answer was, “No.” I did not believe
that. I love the Christmas Carol, “Joy to the World” but I’m not
sure I had ever spoken “God” and “Joy” in the same sentence. In
fact, the word “joy” did not hold a significant place in my vocabulary.
I have long realized
that my father never recovered emotionally from the Depression. A home
demonstration salesman for high-end cookware, when the market for his product
tanked, he lost everything including his sense of security. He became a
self-sufficient farmer so his family would never go hungry. His philosophy
of life was based on having the bare necessities. His sense of God was as
a distant being who afforded minimal help with survival, helping those who
helped themselves.
Looking at what I
had written on the pad from my meditation, I realized how my sense of God had
been conditioned by my father’s, among other things, and how much my life had
been shaped by the negative answer to the question before me, “Did I believe
God wanted joy for me?”
Definitions of
happiness and joy follow a circuitous route using the words interchangeably.
The distinction I think is that happiness is gladness over the things,
experiences, relationships that bring us pleasure. The pursuit of
happiness is largely the pursuit of those things, experiences, relationships.
Joy is better
understood as the source of that which causes delight and that really is within
us; it is within us when we live in the fullness of life. It is that
within which equips us in belief and perspective to be found by and to find joy
in life.
I don’t want to
say much about last week’s youth mission trip to reserve that for worship on
July 15. But one of the experiences Andrea arranged for us on the
“Mirror of Humanity” mission was a visit to the AIR Gallery. A.I.R. is
an acronym for Artists In Recovery. One of the current artists is Kim
Spence-Keffer whose photographs of old houses she described as like seeing and
considering her changing mental condition affected by her mental illness.
One of the photos
was of a window in an old house, its frame scarred, stained and faded, the glass
smudged. The camera focus is on the window frame with the view of the
evidently beautiful landscape outside blurred in background. Titled,
“Darkness Within,” the photo graphically illustrates how we can drown in
despair if we see only our own present condition and fail to view the largeness
of life.
The song by Tom
Waits, “House Where Nobody Lives” plays in her head as she sights her camera
on the old, abandoned houses, writes Kim.
“There’s a house
on my block
that’s abandoned and cold
Once
it held laughter
Once it held dreams
Did
they throw it away
Did they know what it means.
Did
someone’s heart break
Or did someone do somebody wrong
What makes a house grand
Ain’t the roof or the doors
If there’s love in a house
It’s a palace for sure
Without love…
It ain’t nothing but a house
A house where nobody lives
Without love it ain’t nothing
But a house, a house where
Nobody lives.
Spence-Keffer writes
in her artist’s statement, “Thinking of myself as ill only invites more
illness. The psychiatric community has labeled me everything from severely
depressed, to manic depressive, paranoid schizophrenic, suffering from PTSD and
bipolar. I accept none of these labels. I am an artist – period. I
have an artist-temperament. Some would call that crazy. I call it a
creative mind. And I think we all have one; that we all have issues to
overcome, we are all artists in recovery; innocent souls in a healing journey,
in search of love. That’s life.”
The premier
photograph in the show is titled “Love in a House.” Before their aged
house stands an elderly couple, laughing heartily. The photo exudes love
and joy. The couple is the artist’s grandparents. “I grew up
next door to them and they were always a source of light and love for me, in the
midst of what was often a painful, scary childhood.”
We all do have our
issues, circumstances in life we must deal with, sometimes overcome or be
overwhelmed by them. They may be tragedies, disappointments, needs.
They may be good times, fulfilled wishes, abundance. But if we allow the
stuff of life to distort our view of God, of love, of life we can miss the joy
that is our God blessed destiny.
The Psalm we read
this morning can easily fall into that “God on our side against the enemies
out there” mode. But I think it can be also understood as God dispelling
the enemies within. The blessing of the righteousness may not be so much
with prosperity and safety but with love and peace and joy.
Kierkergaard
realized that catastrophe can be a means of grace. It can be an instrument
used by God by which we cease floating passively on all manner of external
attractions. It is by the grace of catastrophe that people sometimes come
to themselves and see what is before them as if for the first time.
What we believe God
wants for us; what we envision life is meant to be does shape our life. If
we see distant and disinterested, stern and punishing, a last resort in
desperation, then we miss the flickers of light in the dark times, the bits of
humor in the tense moments, the sparks of hope in the midst of despair, the fun
in the everyday drudgery. God is the source of all those good things.
God is the joy in believing.
Three weeks ago, I
was in the Adirondack mountains of northeastern
Do you believe God wants joy for you?
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