Joy

"I have said before that you have such a place in our hearts that we would live or die with you. I have great confidence in you; I take great pride in you. I am greatly encouraged; in all our troubles my JOY knows no bounds." (2 Cor. 7:3-4).

"Then make my JOY complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose." (Ph. 2:2)

"Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my JOY and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends!" (Ph. 4:1)

"For what is our hope, our JOY, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and our JOY." (1 Thes. 2:19-20).

"I have no greater JOY than to hear that my children are walking in the truth." (3 John 1:4)

What do I think of when I think of joy? Typically, not people, to be honest. But reading through 2 Corinthians and other parts of Paul's epistles, I was amazed to find how much he placed "joy" in relation to people. The vast majority of the verses in the New Testament (NIV) in the epistles with the word "joy" in them are directly related to people—Paul found joy in others, in seeing them growing in God.

This is poignant in Honduras. I am a very task-oriented person fumbling in a relational culture. It is like liking the color blue in a world where everything shades of pink, red, and yellow. The other night, Melissa (my neighbor, one of my English students, and a student at the seminary with a heart for missions) invited me to watch a movie. I deliberated …Being the task-oriented person I am, I was thinking of my to-do list…Should I watch a movie, or work on my to-do list? Wouldn't I better serve them my editing my ESL lessons, by working on this, by studying Spanish more so I can communicate with them better? There are a million things I can do. Where am I most effective?

I watched the movie with them—and I think that this was the most effective thing I could have done. Here, there is joy in being with each other. And I did feel joy in feeling like I was making friends. I have often asked the missionaries here, "What do you wish the church in America would learn from the church in Honduras?" Their answer is always about the way Hondurans spend time and value relationships.

Paul echoes that—he was writing the Corinthians especially in regards to some church errors. Paul knew how trying people can be, how ungrateful, annoying, etc. But it was in these imperfect people that he found his joy, his crown.

Where is my joy? Where am I investing my time in the pursuit of joy?

This is my prayer for myself: "We proclaim him, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone perfect in Christ. To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me." (1 Cor. 1:28-29)

"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ vere latitat, the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden." (C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory).

See also 1 Thes. 3:9; 1 Tim. 1:4; Phil. 1:4; 1 Jn. 1:4; 2 Jn. 1:12