Finding Joy Amidst Life’s Surprises
Luke 1:39-55 (New International Version)
39At that time Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, 40where she entered Zechariah’s home and greeted Elizabeth. 41When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. 42In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! 43But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. 45Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished!”
46And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord 47and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, 48for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, 49for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. 50His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. 52He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. 53He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers.”
INTRODUCTION: The miserable ones?
Penelope J. Stokes in her book, SIMPLE WORDS OF WISDOM: 52 Virtues for Every Woman (Countryman, Nashville, 1998, p. 26) tells about a scene in the gripping film AMISTAD. A group of Africans--illegally seized and brought to America by slave traders--mutiny, kill most of their captors, take over the ship, and try to return home. Eventually caught and brought to trial, they watch in wonder and confusion as a group of local Christians gather to pray for them. "It’s some sort of dance," one of the Africans suggests as the religious folk get down on their knees.
"It can’t be," his friend responds. "They look too miserable to be dancing."
Everyone in the theater laughed. From that point on, the abolitionist Christians who come to lend their support are referred to, from the mutineers’ perspective, as "The Miserable Ones."
It’s a sad and significant commentary on how the world has come to view Christians. Many in society see Christians as The Miserable Ones, the people who have no sense of humor, no joy in life. It shouldn’t be that way. We are told over and over again to be joyful. Billy Sunday said, “if you have no joy, there’s a leak in your Christianity.”
Christmas is meant to be joy time, and in the stories of Christmas from the Biblical to the secular there is a theme of joy amidst surprises that runs through them. From the secular side, there’s the story of a broken nutcracker that becomes a prince. Scrooge faces up to himself and ends up singing for joy. A guy named George who lost everything discovers that it’s a wonderful life after all.
Yet joy goes beyond these Hollywood recreations of fantasy. Joy at Christmas is real. Angels bring good news of great joy to shepherds. Wise men respond with exceedingly great joy, and when a pregnant Mary encounters a pregnant Elizabeth, John the Baptist in the womb of Elizabeth leaps for joy.
So, how do we plug the joy leak? How do we move from being the miserable ones to the joyful ones? Today let’s look at 3 leaps for joy in How to Find Joy Amidst Life’s Surprises
LEAP 1. TRUST God is always present. Joy is an interesting word. It does not have an automatic opposite created by adding an "un" or "dis" to it. For example, there is pleasure and displeasure, there is happiness and unhappiness but there is no disjoy or unjoy. Joy is something that can take place no matter what else is going on.
When Christian missionaries first went to the northern part of Alaska, they began to seek to translate the Bible into the language of the Eskimos. After some time, they realized there was no word in the Eskimo language for joy. So they began studying the culture even more so, and finally choose a word for joy that was based on what they saw as the most joyful experience in an Eskimo’s daily life.
They decided the most joyful moments in those Eskimo villages were in the evenings when they fed their dogs who pulled their sleds. They would go out and the dogs would yelp and wag their tails and get all excited, and the kids would come out and there was a kind of neighborhood excitement about what was going on. So they pulled out of that experience for the word joy, wagging their tails. The result is when you translate the passage that talks about the disciples seeing Jesus after he rose from the dead and were filled with joy. The Eskimo literally says, "The disciples saw Jesus, and they wagged their tails."
A tail wagging event is described by Elizabeth to Mary in Luke 1:44-45, 44When you came in and greeted me, my baby jumped for joy the instant I heard your voice! 45You are blessed, because you believed that the Lord would do what he said. -- (New Living Translation)
Mary’s trust in the Lord to receive God’s gift of a Son, and to do His will leads to a leap for joy. Recognition of Jesus is not based on my expertise, but His revealing of Himself as He did to John in Elizabeth’s womb. The result? John realizes God is always present, and his response is a leap for joy.
John the Baptist is not the only one leaping for joy, so is the psalmist in Psalm 28:7, "The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to him in song." -- (New International Version)
The power of joy flows out of a relationship with Jesus. Take Jesus out, and the joy is gone as well. U. S. News & World Report, in a cover article on "The Faith Factor," the sad case of Detroit’s Joy of Jesus ministry. Here was a social program that offered job training along with Bible lessons, prayer and faith-centered discussions about the problems of life. Michigan officials, impressed with the ministry’s success ratio, offered state funding with one condition -- give up the prayers and Bible study. The ministry reluctantly agreed.
The result? Where once the program had placed 60% of its students in jobs, the program’s success rate after state backing began to approach zero. Eventually the ministry returned the state money and got back to its original mission -- the JOY of Jesus. It’s our original mission as well.
LEAP 2. KEEP your priorities in order – Jesus, Others, You. Mary sings of God as her number one priority in Luke 1:49-50, 49God All-Powerful has done great things for me, and his name is holy. 50He always shows mercy to everyone who worships him. -- (Contemporary English Version)
Joni Eareckson Tada knows about joy. Quadriplegic. Physically impaired due to a diving accident, she has a prime excuse to wallow in despair. But she knows about joy.
Joni tells about being surrounded by a crowd of women in a restroom during a break at a Christian women’s conference. One woman said, "Oh, Joni, you always look so together, so happy in your wheelchair. I wish that I had your joy!" Several women around her nodded. "How do you do it?" she asked.
Joni glanced at the nicely dressed women around her. She knew that the break would soon be over. How could she answer this woman’s question in about 60 seconds? How could she sum up in a sound bite what had taken her three decades to learn?
"I don’t do it," she said. That raised their eyebrows. "In fact, may I tell you honestly how I woke up this morning?" Several women leaned against the counter to listen.
"This is an average day," she breathed deeply. "After my husband, Ken, leaves for work at 6:00 a.m., I’m alone until I hear the front door open at 7:00 a.m. That’s when a friend arrives to get me up. While I listen to her make coffee, I pray, ‘Oh, Lord, my friend will soon give me a bath, get me dressed, sit me up in my chair, brush my hair and teeth, and send me out the door. I don’t have the strength to face this routine one more time. I have no resources. I don’t have a smile to take into the day. But You do. May I have Yours? God, I need You desperately.’"
"So, what happens when your friend comes through the bedroom door?" one of the women asked.
"I turn my head toward her," said Joni, "and give her a smile sent straight from heaven. It’s not mine. It’s God’s. And so," she said, gesturing to her paralyzed legs, "whatever joy you see today was hard won this morning." The women in the restroom were silent. "And," said Joni, "it’s the only way to live. It’s the Christian way to live."
Joy comes from keeping your priorities in order. Jesus, Others, You. Jesus puts it this way in Matthew 22:37-39, 37Jesus said, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.’ 38This is the most important, the first on any list. 39But there is a second to set alongside it: ‘Love others as well as you love yourself.’” -- (The Message)
Jesus Others You. Sometimes we get it out of order, and it’s YOJ -- You Others Jesus, but that’s backwards and that kind of joy is short lived. Or there’s OJY -- Others Jesus You. Sounds like OJ, but even with yourself in 3rd place it leaves you with a sour taste, God must come first. JYO is deceptive because it has Jesus first, but relegates others to a lower place where they weren’t meant to be. The only way to lasting joy is to follow the order of the letters – JOY – Jesus, Others, You.
LEAP 3. REJOICE that no matter what life brings, God is my Savior. Mary starts her song of praise in Luke 1:46-47, 46Mary said, “My soul praises the Lord’s greatness! 47My spirit finds its joy in God, my Savior.” -- (GOD’S WORD)
Have you ever gone with your kids to Chucky Cheese and played that whack an alligator game. It’s my favorite game. What happens is this alligator pops his head out of a little hole and you hit it and it goes back in. Then it starts going faster and faster. And the more you hit it the more points you get.
How do you have joy in imperfect circumstances? When the alligator of a difficult problem comes at you, you whack it with the truth that God loves me no matter what, the truth that God’s growing me even through this problem. And even though the problem is still there, at least the bite goes out of it. It goes back into its hole. If you ever played that game you know they start coming faster and faster. In our family we all sometimes work on it together sometimes you get somebody else to help you. But you just keep whacking the problems with the truth that God is working even in the midst of the problems.
Peter reminds us of the power of the truth of God as our Savior in 1 Peter 1:3, 8-9, "3Let us give thanks to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! Because of his great mercy he gave us new life by raising Jesus Christ from death. This fills us with a living hope … 8You love him, although you have not seen him, and you believe in him, although you do not now see him. So you rejoice with a great and glorious joy which words cannot express, 9because you are receiving the salvation of your souls, which is the purpose of your faith in him." -- (Today’s English Version)
Joy comes not merely as a baby in a manger at Christmas, but as a Savior who dies on a cross for us, and rises from the dead. Joy comes from realizing no matter what life brings, God is my Savior.
CONCLUSION: Sharing the missing ingredient.
In the early 1970’s, Look magazine sponsored a symposium that gathered a variety of thinkers to attempt to analyze the problems of our world as a decade was dawning. They came to this conclusion, “Joy is the missing ingredient in our culture.” Not a really new discovery since Robert Louis Stevenson noted years ago, “To miss the joy is to miss everything.”
We are called to share the missing ingredient in our world. Most people would settle for a merry Christmas, we offer a joyful life. And the difference is you are merry for a season, but you can be joyful for eternity. There is a limit to merriment, but there is no end to joy. There is no upper limit. For joy can be there no matter the circumstance for we trust that God is always present.
When you think you’ve had all the joy you can tolerate, you’ve only reached your limit, not joy’s limit. By keeping your priorities in order – Jesus, Others, You – you are invited and invite others to take joy to the Jesus level of living..
Hellen Keller said, “Joy is the holy fire that keeps our purpose warm and our intelligence aglow.” That purpose burns brightly when we rejoice that no matter what life brings, God is my Savior and adding that ingredient to the life of others leads them to leap for joy. Amen.
