fathom blog

Moments of Joy

 

It was late on a warm summer night.  The Milky Way was stretched all across the dark Wisconsin sky.  The canoe I was in bobbed lightly on the water.  Tall trees surrounded the lake and were silhouetted against the soft moonlight.  The night breezes carried the hoots of owls, the calls of wolves, and the croaks of frogs.  Fireflies danced and burned everywhere.  The smells of pine, water, and night formed a perfume that man could not make.

 

In the boat with me was my best friend Brad.  Our laughing and talking had stopped about an hour ago.  Those things were exchanged for the awe of the night.  Even though we were only 14 years old we could sense the grandeur of the moment and our surroundings.  In many ways that night was the first night of my life, the first night of both of our lives.  It was the first occasion I remember being conscious of something bigger than me.

 

It was in that moment that I became aware of a world, a universe, and an existence that was greater than anything I had understood.  I felt time, beauty, power, creativity, love, awe, amazement, connection, relationship, solidarity, purpose, and place for the first time.  It was as if all the years prior to this moment had been spent totally on myself.  I had thought, worried, and focused totally on me.  Till this moment there was a universe, and I was the center of it.  But this night, it was if I had woken up to a reality of which I had been previously unaware.

 

A meteor shot through the sky leaving a streak of light.  Silver wispy clouds were the artist’s perfect final touches on the canvas of creation.  In my heart…in my mind…I felt my whole being filling with a deep, strange sensation.  JOY.  I had been happy before.  I had had fun before.  But this was the first moment I had experienced joy.  Nature, situation, circumstances led me to it, but its source was clearly (to me now) God.  It had nothing to do with me.  It was outside of me.  I became aware of something that was already there, and that infinite presence filled me to overflowing.

 

I did not know what to do.  I wanted to sing.  I wanted to run into it.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted laugh.  I lay there…full. 

 

 

 

 

Moments of joy.  This event I just shared with you started me on a search to know the source of that joy which has filled my life and will continue to do so.

 

Have you ever had a moment of joy?  Take a minute.  Remember it.

 

A moment of complete fullness when the source was not in you.  If you have experienced one, you have tasted a very special thing.

 

I read through the Bible.  There is so much pain.  There is so much sin, brokenness, and complaining.  Much of life is hard, sad, and painful.  Those things are true.  But there are moments of foretaste.  Moments of preview.  Moments of overwhelming joy.

 

Read 2 Samuel 6.

 

In this passage King David has a moment of overwhelming joy.

 

For David, the Ark of the Covenant is the object that leads to joy.  What does the Ark represent?  Why is he so glad to have it back?

 

What is David feeling, thinking, experiencing?

 

 

What is the source of joy?

 

 

What blocks joy?

 

 

 

What other people in the Bible experienced a moment of joy?

 

 

 

Tonight it is my prayer that you experience joy.  Celebrate those moments, people, and events in the past that brought you to know joy (1 Thessalonians 3:9).  Celebrate Jesus Christ who is our hope and our joy (Psalm 126:2).

 

Write your own story to the praise of our Creator.