Out of My Mind…Living in Joy
January 1, 2010
Colin Saxton is general superintendent of Northwest Yearly Meeting.
Deeper still…
As the calendar resets with another January, my first act of the new year is to declare 2010 “The Year of Joy!” Please make a note of it.
Yes, I know the Chinese calendar has already set 2010 as “The Year of the Tiger.” You may also remember the movie that came out in the early 1980s called 2010: The Year We Make Contact. As I recall, this meant contact with some alien, intelligent life-form. (I wonder if aliens would consider us an intelligent life-form?)
Many, of course, hope 2010 will be “the year of economic recovery.” Most Friends in Boise believe 2010 is “the year of the Broncos” (that’s the Boise State football team, for us outsiders).
I’m sure countless other slogans have been given to 2010. With so many announcing what will and will not be the year’s focus, I decided to add my two cents. I will say it again: 2010 is “The Year of Joy.”
As I learn to go deeper into Christ, joy is what I experience. Not giddy happiness. Not an absence from pain or elimination of real-world suffering. In fact, in terms of a sensitivity to others’ suffering, it seems that the deeper one goes into the Christ life, the more one is aware of how much hurt and how much brokenness is in the world.
Joy is an altogether different animal, isn’t it? It may cause you to do all kinds of outlandish things. Consider the parable Jesus told in Matthew 13. In this story, a man out wandering in a field stumbles upon a treasure.
In a war-torn region where conquerors often buried their booty for safe-keeping, this man likely found a forgotten treasure trove. Apparently, the landowner did not know this treasure existed, or he would have gathered it up long ago. By law, our wandering hero could have laid claim to these goods.
Instead, the man sold everything he had to purchase the field where the treasure was buried. He did not even “borrow” a few of the gold coins or precious stones in advance to pay off the landowner. Instead, he went home and liquidated all of his assets to buy the land with the treasure.
What would move a person to do such a thing? Joy.
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.”
Whatever he found that day must have been amazing! Life-changing. He must have looked deeply enough into the treasure to realize it was worth far more than anything else he possessed.
Too often, the faith life is more an expression of duty, obligation, fear of punishment or tradition, than a response rising out of deep joy. When this is the case, the Christian witness we demonstrate and proclaim winds up looking awfully constrained, reserved and guarded. There is little sense of wild abandon about it, not much radical self-giving, only hints of the kind of extravagant grace we have experienced for ourselves in Christ.
But that sort of stingy, lifeless faith is not who we are. Not this year!
Instead, let’s commit to look again at the treasure we have in Christ. And, instead of simply stumbling upon this grace…let us go deeper into Jesus and into his joy…and be surprised anew at just how good God is and how blessed we are.
The Old Testament prophet Zephaniah gives a great image of joy. Picturing God restoring Israel after a hard season of discipline, he writes:
“Sing, O Daughter of Zion; shout aloud, O Israel! The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zeph. 3:14a, 17)
God sings over us for joy. But shouldn’t it really be the other way around?
Friends, may we do more than feel joy this year. Let’s act in joy. Let’s live in joy. And most of all, let’s share our joy with each other and with the world around us.
Happy New Year to each of you! May this be a season of deep joy, enduring peace and abundant fruitfulness for you and your loved ones.
Queries for Discussion:
- Where have you experienced the joy of life in Christ?
- What barriers to such joy do you face?
- How might joyful living transform NWYM?
I love making treasure hunts for my kids. The look on their eyes as they are getting closer and closer to the the treasure is one of complete excitement and joy. Jesus has so many treasures to show us in our daily lives…all of which will bring us joy or a sense of wonder. Listen for the clues to the treasure by asking, then being still before the Lord so that you can hear what/where they are.
One barrier I might face in finding these treasures is not remaining open to doing things “out of the box” so to speak. The Lord’s ways are not always our ways. The Lord’s ways may involve stepping out of our perceived comfort zone for a bit, stepping “out of the box” into a whole new way of doing things.