When Joy takes a holiday

 

Since the middle of January up until two days ago, I had many hours of wondering if this was the way God would take me home. Much of the time I felt as if I would not survive or not ever feel normal again. I joke that normal is only a setting on the dryer, but when illness hits and does not go away, normal takes on a different meaning.

Not only that, my joy vanished. All through the years, the joy of the Lord has always been there, deep in my heart and through good and bad, but this past few weeks, it was missing. Knowing self-pity drives it underground didn’t help. Praying that I would not feel sorry for myself didn’t help. All the kindness shown to me in the hospital and after at home didn’t help. Whining like OT Job with “why this” questions went unanswered.

Finally I stopped all my asking and surrendered to the will of God without knowing what that might be. I belong to Him and He would do whatever He wanted for me, and I accepted that. The very next morning His joy returned. Still coughing and somewhat more tired than usual, but “normal” came back in that when I asked for the joy of the Lord, He granted it to me — and those who know this joy also know that hardships lose their power when joy takes over.

Today’s devotional says joy is not a thing to rejoice over, like the return of health or an outside event, nor is it to be idolized as something to put on a pedestal. Instead, it is the gladness of truth, of realizing what Christ has done, that I know Him, and that no matter what might be happening, He brings delight to my heart. Outer well-being does not do that. Joy goes beyond circumstances in this world with a clear comprehension of who God is and who I am because of Jesus.

The devotional author says we “do not on an earthly plane rejoice in our joy but in the thing that causes our joy. And on the heavenly plane it is the same. We are not to rejoice in our joy, but we are to rejoice in the Lord, and joy in the God of our salvation.” The OT prophet put it this way:

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places… (Habakkuk 3:17–19)

Not only can no man or devil take this joy from us, and no earthly sorrows can touch it unless… and God answered my “why” questions with this final paragraph:

All the spiritual writers of past generations have recognized this joy in God, and all of them have written concerning the stripping process that seems necessary to bring us to it. They have called this process by different names—“inward desolation,” “winter of the soul,” “dispensation of darkness”—all meaning the same thing, which is the experience of finding all earthly joys strained or taken away in order to drive the soul to God alone.

PRAY: Jesus, I would not thought of being so sick as a stripping process or even these other names for such an experience, but am thankful that in it, You have shown me in a deeper way than ever before that You are enough. No matter what happens, I can rejoice in You, the only One who is the same yesterday, today, and forever.