Where is Our Joy?

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas… but honestly, it doesn’t feel like it. The air is turning cold, the presents are under the tree, the refrigerator is full of Christmas cookies, the parties are planned but my heart is heavy. Usually around Christmas, spirits are high and I feel like a snow flake falling joyfully from the sky. But right now I am not sure where my joy is?

 I know it’s there some where deep inside my heart. I know happiness is fleeting but joy lasts forever. So is that joy just misplaced or hidden deep in the worries of my heart. As I was reading the Christmas story this morning trying to find joy in the beginning of it all, I realized a lot of times we do misplace our Christmas joy in things that really have nothing to do with Christmas at all. We have the tree, the cookies, the presents and the Children’s Christmas program, but thats not Christmas. In Matthew chapter 1 verses 22-23 it reads “All this took place to fufill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will be with Child and give birth to a son and they will call him Immanuel”, which means, “God with us.”

God with us. Immanuel, Immanuel, Immanuel. That is it, that is where my Joy is hidden. It’s been with God the whole time for He is my joy. When Jesus came into the world many of the jews had given up hope. They were in a place where God seemed distant and they thought they could not have joy under the Roman rule. Recently, I have had my moments where I felt just like those jews, God has felt distant and I’ve honestly been disconnected. Living here in the South a lot of times I feel like an alien, an outcast, or completely unwelcome, at times even in the church I serve at. Like those jews living under Roman rule they had freedom, they had rights, jobs, and some place in society, but they were not Roman citizens, they had no voice and had to do what was expected of them without question.

It’s no wonder by the time that Jesus showed up that many of the jews were simply looking for someone to over throw the Romans. They were tired, weary and had very little to be joyful about. I think thats why many of them missed the fact that Jesus was the Messiah. They missed that he was God with us. They thought their joy as a nation and a people would be restored when the Roman’s were gone, but Jesus was not here for that. He came to bring Joy to the world, to set the captives free, to bind up the broken hearted and to simply be God with us in the fullest of senses.

I think one of the things that has been stealing my joy is our Children’s Christmas program. Last year was my first year ever writing the Christmas program and it went really well. But this year, my heart has not been in it. When I read the script it lacks joy. There are these expectations that every year the children have to preform a Christmas program, and there is this feeling each year that this really isn’t for the kids at all, it’s for the parents and grandparents which is okay, however, at the same time it is one of the saddest things I have ever experienced.

Where is our joy? In a silly Christmas program (I can call it that cause I wrote it). Is it in our children half singing a song or two, in knowing that we are carrying on some tradition thats losing its meaning. I honestly want to scrap the whole play even though it’s happening this sunday and simply read the Christmas Story to the children, reminding them that God is with us. That Joy doesn’t come from presents, or trees, or cookies or santa. Our joy should be found in knowing God is with us. We should wake up each morning reminded that God is with us, that he is not distant, that we are not alone, that no matter what the world says or no matter how much someone doesn’t really like you, God loves you.

I think we have lost where our hope and joy should be. We have misplaced it…But we have to wake up, we can’t give up hope, we have to dig deep, look upon the face of God and ask him to restore our joy. A joy in him, a joy that flows over from a heart that knows love, a joy that understands God is with us, a joy that sings loud for all to hear because everyone should know and experience this joy.

May any who read this have a Merry Christmas full of God’s Joy!

God is with us

-Caleb Ross Hunter

Day 35 “A Year of Thoughts”: Cookies and Thoughts

My best friend and I baked cookies today.

Simple. Easy to make and easy to eat.

Lots of chocolate and we ate half of them.

 

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

P.S. Somedays are just simple, and this was one of those. Making cookies was a lot of fun. Sometimes we just need simple days, simple enjoyment. Just to share a cookie.

Day 31 “A Year of Thoughts”: Relational, Not Baking Cookies

 

“Becoming a Christian might look more like falling in love than baking cookies”- Donald Miller

Relational, relational, relational, over the past weeks and months the lessons I seem to be learning and being reminded of keep pointing back to the fact that God is relational. Life is not about rules, laws, rituals and recipes but about relationship and growing in love. I want everyday to be a day to fall more in love with God. I want my life to be about relationship with God and his creation.

Today, I met with a senior pastor and youth leader about taking over the youth leaders position when he leaves. I was encouraged by our conversation and we wound up on the topic of Donald Miller. Donald is one of my favorite authors and I share a lot of the same ideas about life. I have read all of Donald’s books and find that through reading them I can see the maturity and change in Donald’s life as he has grown as a man. It’s encouraging to me to read about someone wrestling through some of the same thoughts and ideas.

One of the books he has written is titled, “Searching for God knows what.” I underlined a number of quotes from this book. As I flipped through these quotes many of them are about relationship.

“It doesn’t make a great deal of sense that a person who went to Bible college should have a better shot at heaven than someone who didn’t, and it doesn’t make a lot of sense either that somebody sentimental and spiritual has a greater access. I think it is more safe and more beautiful and more true to believe that when a person dies he will go to be with God because, on earth, he had come to know Him, that he had a relational encounter with God and not unlike meeting a friend or a lover or having a father or taking a bride, and that in order to engage God he gave up everything, repented and changed his life, as this sort of extreme sacrifice is what is required if true love is to grow. We would expect nothing less in marriage; why should we accept anything less in becoming unified with Christ?” (156)

It’s a long quote but he makes a really good point, being in relationship with God is the point. Being in relationship is like falling in love, for love to grow there is sacrifice and life change and required much of us. Relationship requires we give our lives, relationship beckons us to give our all and hold nothing back. You can’t just bake magical cookies and get to heaven. God wants to be in relationship with his creation. He wants to be in relationship with you and me. He doesn’t just want to know us and for use to know Him, he wants to walk in relationship with us through life.

“It would be most tragic for a person to know everything about God, but not God; to know all about the rules of spiritual marriage, but never walk the aisle.”(204)

We were born, created, made, to be relational people. What we are searching for is relationship. Our souls yearn for relationship with God. In the Bible it talks about the church being the bride and Christ being the groom. That is relationship. A marriage where the bride and groom know nothing about being in a relationship with each other is not just awkward but tragic.

This relationship and preparation, this falling in love is hard, it’s not a formula or recipe or time frame. Love grows with choices, choices made to live love, to sacrifice. God started the relationship by loving you. He bought the ring and has asked you for your hand, He has even sent his son to buy you back from your enslavement, adultery, and despair. God loves you.

Your soul is searching for a relationship.

God loves you.

Do you get that?

Can you grasp that?

Do you live like you know that?

-Caleb Ross Hunter