WHERE JOY IS FOUND

A few things:

‡ Listening to Kirk Franklin music (or just gospel for that matter) makes me ridiculously pep-silly

‡ So does this amazingly beautiful weather… I can’t help but smile as the cool breeze hits my face and tickles my skin – this teaser taste of fall weather to come makes me giddy with excitement.

‡ Long sleeved shirts, shorts, and flops = YES!!

‡ God has been so good that I can’t begin to describe the joy I’ve been feeling. So much has He opened my eyes and heart to that I’ve held hidden away… and I can’t help but be thankful for amazing friends that He’s specifically placed in my life right now.

On a more personal note… let me talk about joy. Yes, THAT joy… the joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart. WHERE?! Yes, “Where?” would be the proper question right now.

I’d like to say that in life I’ve really tried living in the present… to seek the joys that God daily feeds into my life. However, the more common path I tend to take at times has been to overlook and not see Him, especially when rough circumstances or situations have arisen. This makes me think God is a very clever magician. For a season He will feel so close and my eyes are so aware and opened to the reality of His presence… but then POOF! just as quickly, He vanishes!… and I’m telling you, now I see Him, now I don’t and my eyes shut time and time again. Where did He go and all of a sudden where is that joy?

So I try to live life with open eyes… at least that’s my heart’s desire, but you know, I also find myself sitting on the fence and watching time pass by (esp during those vanishing acts). An hour. A day. A week, a month… without seeing Him or all of what He’s active/alive and still doing. How do I miss that? Does the world pass by or just pass me by because my eyes are closed?

A quote:
“… I see God in a sunrise and a sunset, in the miracles of life and nature… I feel God with every breath and every heartbeat, feel God in the things I may at one time have taken for granted, including the very ability to feel; whether I feel sadness or joy, I am grateful to simply feel. I hear the voice of God in the purring of one of my cats, and see God in the clouds in the sky, the homeless person who smiled the other day when I bought them a bag of groceries. The little things that are insignificant to some but which have given me hope during a tough day. The smile I got the other day when I stopped to hold the door open for someone… The individuality and the diversity of life to me is a celebration of God's Creativity.”

[Why and how would I ever want to casually walk through life without seeing His presence!]

My homegroup is about to start a John Piper study called “Clusters of Hope”. More about it here… but in the end what we’ll hopefully start to recognize is how God resides everywhere, in all parts of life across the world from politics to pop culture. Through this study “we would feel the hope of His victory and that the personal problems of our little lives would be swallowed up in the great God of hope who is at work in such tremendous ways in the world today”.

“Swallowed up in the great God of hope…” – I like that. :)

So I’m excited. Excited because God already has me rubbing the sleepies from my eyes. I find it simply amazing how the smallest of things, even if they are a struggle to finally do so, can awaken and stir the soul to find complete joy, joy, joy, joy in Him.

SIGNED: TO STAY!
PSALM 51:12: “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit.”