A New Story

Faith, God, Healing, Joy 1

For much of my life, this guilt, pressure, and fear of exposure had left me fairly exhausted. But I am slowly but surely walking into a new story, gradually but most definitely jettisoning those things that don’t ring true anymore and traveling much lighter. My reverence for God has never been greater, my wonder never more full, my desire to know my Maker never stronger. The difference is, I now see God through the lens of one who is beloved, not one who is beloved with conditions. Life now is not a test to try and reach God, but an opportunity to notice God. I am seeking Jesus more deeply than ever — not to escape punishment, but to discover life as it is best lived. My faith is not about fleeing something horrible, but running toward something beautiful. I am daily responding in gratitude for the beauty of the gift of this world, not in the hope I can eventually escape it. I come to the Scriptures now not as divine dictation, but as the journal entries of those who came before me and who have walked this road of asking, seeking, and knocking.

— John Pavlovitz, A Bigger Table, p. 164

Photo: Rocky Mountains, January 7, 2020

No Greener Grass

Contentment, Joy 0

We don’t find happiness. We become it. We embody it. We decide to see our life through a different lens. We cease telling ourselves that we should be somewhere else — that “other” place we will never actually get to. There is no greener grass; it’s the lawn we are standing on that we must water and care for. Happiness begins the second we stop believing it is somewhere other than here. And then, no matter where we want to go, it comes along with us.

— Caroline Myss, Intimate Conversations with the Divine, p. 79

Photo: Leithöfe, Germany, April 1997

Practicing Happiness

Gratitude, Joy 0

Before you lay your head on your pillow and go to sleep,
recall just three things you were thankful for today.
If you continue to do this for two months,
you will see an increase in your level of happiness,
because instead of focusing on what is wrong with your life,
you will develop a habit of looking for what is good.
A happy mind-set needs practice.

— Haemin Sunim, Love for Imperfect Things, p. 66

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, July 2, 2020

Steeped in Joy

Joy, Life 0

Through my experiment in joy, a whole dimension of Christianity has opened up to me, like a beautiful flower blossoming from a bud long dormant. This new spirituality is of such sweetness, light, and grace that it entirely entrances me. I’ve always suspected the existence of this and have had many glimpses of it. What’s different now is the confidence that I know the way into this new country and how to live there, because I’ve discovered for myself that it’s real. I believe! Finally I believe enough in the Bible’s offer of everlasting joy to see this great promise fulfilled in my own life. I shall never be the same. The veil of the world’s lies has been torn away, and now I know for certain that the Christian life is meant to be entirely steeped in joy. With the author of Hebrews I can say that I’ve already come to “the city of the living God . . . to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly” (12:22).

My experiment has been wildly successful. Joy has indeed become an ingrained habit of my soul — so much a part of me that it hardly seems possible that I lived without it for nearly half a century. Not only am I much happier now than ever before, but I know it’s possible to keep moving in the direction of joy and to have more and more of it. In the search for joy a certain point arrives where the balance tips in our favor. We find we’re no longer striving for happiness, we’re simply happy. It’s like getting out of debt: Without a fat mortgage payment to dole out every month, life takes on an entirely different feel. Difficulties still come, perhaps grave ones, but joy keeps flowing into the hurts like a self-renewing stream.

Is it really possible to be happy all the time? Three years after my experiment, I still cannot quite join Brother Lawrence in saying, “I am always very happy.” What I can say is that every day is full of moments of happiness, as full as the sky is of stars. Yes, an immense expanse of cold black space yawns out there, but that’s not what draws my eye anymore. My gaze, and with it my understanding, have shifted. To believe in God is to believe in good and to see its preponderance everywhere. All I see now are the bright, jewel-like moments of joy that keep coming to me and that, taken together, do not seem a jumble of random sparks but comprise a great and dazzling picture — a vision so beautiful as to utterly overwhelm the darkness.

— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 187-188

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 22, 2020

Door Openers

Core Value, God, Jesus, Joy, Love 0

I would like to love other people enough to go to extraordinary measures to open the door and invite them in, rather than passively allow the door to close, go on my way and keep them out. Jesus said, “I am the gate. . . . All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them” (John 10:7).

Jesus encouraged his followers to become door openers rather than gatekeepers. He hoped that once people experienced the goodness of God, the love of God, and the grace of God, they would reside in it and be free to share it with others. This is why people who were sinners, outcasts, and poor loved Jesus and felt such joy in his presence. They were unaccustomed to being loved by someone who was talking about the ways of God. They knew that Jesus valued them, that he saw their worth, not one that they had earned or instilled within themselves. He saw their intrinsic value, the image of God that was imprinted upon their lives.

How does one become a door opener who leads others to the joy of Christ rather than a gatekeeper who judges others? Observing Jesus enables us to see how to value a vulnerable person.

— Tom Berlin, Reckless Love, p. 99-100

Photo: Festung Hohenwerfen, August 1998

The Source of Joy

God, Joy 0

Joy is rooted not in what, when, why, or how, but in who. Meanings and explanations can get in the way of experiencing the greatest joy of all, which is simply to be with the Divine Lover without any other meaning except being together. If we understood all mysteries, our joy could not be as great, for joy feeds upon a God of splendor and majesty who is far beyond our comprehension.

— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 171-172

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 30, 2020

Permanent Joy

Joy 0

Joy is a permanent facet of the character of God who lives in me by His Holy Spirit. The more I believe this, the more it changes me, and the more this change is no flash in the pan but a permanent change of character.

Jesus gives His word that my joy will never be taken away. It inhabits a place in me that nothing and no one else can touch or influence, so long as I’m careful to honor that place. I may surrender my joy, but no person, nor any circumstance, can take it from me. It’s here to stay so long as I trust it. When I keep a wary eye on joy, fearful that she’ll slip away, I cannot fully relax to enjoy her. To the extent that I disbelieve in joy’s permanence, I’ll find her to be a fickle friend — exactly as fickle as my faith.

— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 168

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 18, 2020

Joy in Thankfulness

Joy 0

To be happy is to count oneself among the haves, not the have-nots. Joy comes from having all we need and more. When we have an abundance, we’re thankful, and thankfulness feeds joy so that we have more and more. Though we sit down to an empty table, we give thanks and somehow the food of joy arrives, just as happened when Jesus fed a multitude with one boy’s lunch. Being thankful for what we have, however little it may seem, means we never want for happiness.

When we see ourselves as have-nots, on the other hand, the thieves of discontent and anxiety quickly set to work, stealing even what we have. This is what happened to Adam and Eve, as the serpent provoked in them a sense of have-not, and they lost Paradise. People were created to be happy, and there’s no reason not to be. Unhappiness is understandable but not defensible. When we’re fooled into being unhappy, unhappiness itself becomes our downfall. All sin stems from discontent, whereas the person who is joyful in the Lord will not go astray.

— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 165

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, May 3, 2020

The Holy City

God, Healing, Hope, Joy 0

God’s beloved city in Revelation 21-22 is not primarily a vision for after we die, or for after Jesus returns. It is rather a vision that can transform the way we live out God’s reign in the world today. It is a vision of the healing leaves that God wants to lay on every broken heart, on every war-torn landscape. It is a vision of Lamb power in the world. And we are part of that vision. Once we have seen the new creation, the joy of that experience must inform everything we do.

— Barbara R. Rossing, The Rapture Exposed, p. 164

Photo: Potzbach, Germany, April 1997

Better Things To Do

Joy 0

Remembering and retaining joy takes work, which is why the New Testament continually exhorts us to “hold on to the good” (1 Thessalonians 5:21). People must hold on to something. If I don’t hold the good, then I’ll hold the bad and stay stuck in problems. My experiment taught me to feel differently about problems. Where before I’d experienced them as maddeningly engrossing, now they became like old flames with whom I long ago fell out of love. They didn’t have the power to entice me as before. In the light of my happy marriage to joy, it was easier to throw them off. Chronic problems have a way of going round and round on a hamster wheel, and a joyful person loses interest in this. Joy has better things to do.

— Mike Mason, Champagne for the Soul, p. 160

Photo: South Riding, Virginia, April 22, 2020