Joy

The afternoon sun came streaming through the open blinds of my window, laying stripes of light across my gray flannel shirt. Tears welled up in my eyes, which initially might have seemed like an overreaction. “It’s just the sun!” I thought to myself. “Not something to cry over!” But amidst a winter where the sky was as gray as my flannel shirt day after day, the return of the sun felt like a glorious gift—a reminder that winter would not last forever. I stood a little longer at the window, taking it all in, my salty tears sparkling in the sunlight. “Thank you!” I prayed. 

In my part of the world, Lent begins in these gray, sunless days of winter when the tree branches are still bare, the ground is still frozen hard, and the robins have not yet returned. As Easter draws closer, I often find myself standing by the window, waiting for the sun to break through and bring with it all the gifts of springtime. While my watching and waiting cannot make Lent go any faster or Easter come any sooner, my anticipation sheds some light on a big idea that is written down in the Psalms: “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30:5b). 

As we’ve been learning together, the Apostle Paul names joy as one of the fruits of the Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control” (Gal. 5:22-23). When we read more about Paul and his life, his encouragement to live a life of joy is rather remarkable, especially because Paul had many reasons not to be very joyful. Yet despite being arrested, imprisoned, and persecuted for preaching the Gospel, Paul found reasons to not only be joyful, but to also give thanks to God for his protection, peace, and provision.  

One place we see this is in a letter that Paul writes to his friends while he is under house arrest in Rome: “I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now” (Phil. 1:3-5). Paul continues, sharing why his spirit remains joyful even in his imprisonment and limitation: “I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance” (1:19). 

My life circumstances are far different than Paul's, but like Paul, I’ve experienced how encouraging and powerful it can be to practice joy and express gratitude amidst life’s harder moments. As the writer and priest Tish Harrison Warren says, “To choose joy is to see all existence as a gift, which is why the practice of joy is inseparable from the practice of gratitude. Gratitude gives birth to joy because gratitude teaches us to receive life as a gift in the moment we’re in. It teaches us that our very existence is a gift.”

In my life, practicing joy sometimes looks like thanking God when the sun comes out after a string of gray days, or expressing gratitude for the warmth and coziness of my home during winter. Practicing joy does not mean ignoring the harsh realities of winter, putting on a bathing suit, and going outside with a beach chair in the middle of a snowstorm. Rather, practicing joy means letting Christ clothe me in his care and taking a moment to look in the mirror at my reflection. And what do I see? Well, the prophet Isaiah describes it quite well: “I delight greatly in the Lord; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels” (Isaiah 61:10). 

There are still a few more days of winter ahead, a few more weeks of Lent, and a few more days of gray skies and bare tree branches. And while I sometimes wish we could hurry up past the hard parts and just have springtime and Easter, I am reminded of the women at the garden tomb at dawn. They arrived at the tomb with heavy hearts, but left with their spirits lifted by the most joyful news ever: Jesus is risen!

When our hearts feel heavy, the story of Easter morning reminds us again that “joy comes with the morning.” So whether you’re in a Roman prison (hopefully not!) or in your home on an ordinary winter afternoon (more likely), let us pray for these things: May the joy of knowing that Jesus is risen help thaw the frozen ground beneath you; may joy take root in your heart and signs of new life spring up all around you; and may the joy of the first Easter bring hope to the Easter you’re waiting for right now. Amen.