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

Healing is like Gutting a Pumpkin

“Some men came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them.  Since they could not get him to Jesus because of the crowd, they made an opening in the roof above Jesus by digging through it and then lowered the mat the man was lying on. ⁵When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralyzed man, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”- Mark 2:3-5

 

There are times that I wonder what it would have been like to be one of those people that Jesus healed. To be one of the lepers or the blind man who got mud smeared on his eyes, or the man with the shriveled hand or the deaf and mute man who had never uttered a single word. I can close my eyes and try to imagine I’m blind but I’m sure that it’s not the same, because I have seen so much of the world that I can imagine things I have seen and can’t really comprehend not even knowing what light is. I am sure that it would have been mind blowing for some of the people that Jesus healed. One day your whole concept of life changed simply because what use to be a black mass or blur became clear and beautiful. From reading about the brain and neurological system that runs most of your body there could have been major brain trauma if Jesus had healed just the eyes themselves, but Jesus went deeper than just mud on the eyes, he healed the whole person and left them far better than he found them. It wouldn’t make sense if Jesus just healed the man’s eye balls yet left him with no real grasp of the world he could now see. He would have been confused and just as lost in the world of light as he was in his former world of darkness. Perhaps there are times that we only want Jesus to heal part of us, just enough to take away our sins but not alter our way of life or concept of the world.

In youth group yesterday we studied Mark chapter 2:1-12 which is the story of Jesus healing the paralyzed man. In order to try to grasp what it would be like to be paralyzed I had all the students lay down on the floor and close there eyes and not move for 2 min while trying to think about not being able to do their favorite thing or not being able to feed themselves. They said it was challenging and left them feeling a little sad yet hard to comprehend what that really would be like.  As we discussed and read the story one of the main points that I was trying to get across to them is how Jesus didn’t just simply heal the paralyzed man but he went deeper. The fact that Jesus first words to the man wasn’t “why did your friends rip a hole through the roof?” or “just get up and walk cause your interrupting the flow of my talking” or “can’t you see it’s already packed in here”, might have really surprised people what were there and should surprise us a little today. Jesus does the unexpected all the time and this time he just says “Son, your sins are forgiven”. After Jesus says that the man is still laying there paralyzed. Nothing changed that we could see.

People weren’t happy that Jesus was forgiving the man. In that time people who were disabled were thought to be that way because of their sin or their parents sin. They were outcasts and thought of as worthless. When Jesus forgives the man’s sin he isn’t just forgiving the man but he is also speaking to the crowd that has gathered around him. He is saying ” I have the power to forgive sins and I don’t believe this man’s life is worthless, just look at those four friends who were so driven and determined to find healing for their friend that they ripped through the roof. Why don’t you have faith like them?”. People knew that Jesus could heal the paralytic if he wanted to, they had faith because they had seen him heal others and that could be why so many had come, but they lacked the faith that jesus could heal the whole person from the inside out.

When we were discussing this fact that Jesus has the power to heal from the inside out Eighth grader Lindsey Davis said “It’s like carving a pumpkin, you have to clean out all the guts and seeds from the inside so his light can shine through us.” Thats exactly what Jesus is doing in this story and wants to do in us. He is cleaning the gunk from the inside of the man so that his light can shine to the rest of the crowd. That they might experience his true and real forgiveness. That they might be fully healed. Thats why when Jesus healed people their lives were changed forever, not just physically but spiritually. They were in the streets telling of all he had done for them, shinning the light from the inside out. They had reasons to shout it from the mountain tops and let the whole world know.

Jesus didn’t just forgive the mans sins that day but he also gave him his life back. He went home walking, skipping, running and jumping, carrying his own mat with no need for anyones help. Do we go home jumping and shouting about what Jesus has done for us? or do we just settle for having a little faith that he just might forgive me but he really cant change me. We paralyze ourselves with excuses like I am to old, I am to stubborn, I don’t have passion, I don’t care enough, or I have fear that I’ll just keep on sinning, or what i say won’t come out right, or no one would really think anything has changed. We are like the paralytic laying there on the mat, we have been forgiven yet we don’t move, we don’t act like we are forgiven, we don’t celebrate the fact that we have life and that we have the opportunity every moment to shine that light. To tell others our story. To show the world we are different and God loves them.

When we get up and take our mats we have the opportunity to be like the paralytics friends. We have a choice to make, to be determined and driven enough to tell the world and love those around us. I challenge anyone to read that story in Mark and find yourself in one of the many people in that story. Who are you? Where are you at? Are you allowing Jesus to fully heal you and give you life, life to the fullest.

-Caleb Ross Hunter

 

Day 37 “A Year of Thoughts”: From the Womb to Learning about Light

 

Early this morning (I’m not a morning person) my friend and I read through John 1, and as I was looking through one of my journals I found a few pages I had written up over this same chapter when I had read it last June. It’s always interesting for me to go back and read some of my writings, I instantly know the voice and many times the setting around which I wrote. In this case I spent much of the journal entry talking about how I had come to the point where I needed God to father me. I remember that moment in Brazil where I was struggling with teaching, struggling with my online classes and stressed to the max with everything else. In that moment I needed God more than ever and John’s words seemed to speak clearly to my soul.

 

“Yet to all who have received him to those who believed in his name he gave the right to become children of God- children born not of natural descent, nor human decision or a husbands will but born of God.”

After reading that I wrote in my journal, “To be as a child, humble and eager to learn. To encounter Jesus…. He changes us… to ask the father to father us. I realized how I was denying God the right to father me, I was rebelling intentionally against my father and not allowing God to father me. I was able to confront that and ask for forgiveness and for God to really teach me. It’s humbling to say that I need a father, I need God to father me and teach me all over again as a child. It’s like encountering light right out of the womb, for the first time, it’s so amazing and mysterious at the same time. We slowly learn what it is and how to see, to speak, and move. Lord, I pray that as a child I would learn these things all again, to see you and others, to speak your words, to move as you guide and to listen as you speak.”

I want to encounter Jesus everyday. To learn to be fathered by my heavenly father and to listen to his voice as I move through the day. As I was reading through the old journal I was moved by the prayer.

“To see God and others, To speak your words, To move as you guide, To listen as you speak”

What does that look like to see God and others? This requires us to get out side of ourselves, to wake up, open our eyes and begin to take in every moment of life. To breathe deeply and ask God to reveal himself to us through the world in which we live, we see. God is moving but sometimes we have so blinded ourselves with the business and chaos of our lives that we have lost sight of the presence of God moving in and through our world.

He is there we just have to look.

God will teach us how to see him.

Like exploring light to a new born baby we may have encountered it but with farther learning and experience with it we will better understand and see it. God is showing himself through his creation. Like a gardener who has labored hard over the plants and flowers for months watching them grow, God takes us excitedly into this world, this garden, this planet he has created and says “See me, see what I have created, I will always be present and show myself, my love to you.

However, God has also filled this world with people. This may be inconvenient for some people that would rather keep to themselves and forget the rest of the world but over and over God says love others. How can we love others if we don’t see them? If we don’t open our eyes to the world around us and start caring that other people do inhabit this earth.

As we begin to see people we begin to get to know them. I don’t simply want to stop at seeing people, I want to move to get to know them. This takes time, to learn, to love. We need God to father us as we encounter him.

Ask God to Father you it may change the way you see the world?

-Caleb Ross Hunter