some clarifications about joy

Remember the campfire song...or VBS...or Sunday School.....even in my worship leading I use it sometimes...."I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart...where? ...etc.etc.." I sing it and mean it. That joy is down there and it is real. Nothing can take away my joy in knowing Jesus Christ and having Him live in my heart. That is bottom line for me. I can sing the words to this song and mean it....t"Happiness is to know the Saviour, living a life within His favour..taking a trip that leads to Heaven.....happiness is the Lord....true joy is mine...no matter if the teardrops start....I've found the answer...it's Jesus in my heart....etc. etc...." I could go on and on. I wouldn't be a worship leader if I couldn't. And leading worship helps my joy to grow, to return, and to stay.

But I wouldn't be studying counselling, or writing these kinds of thoughts, if I didn't know the struggle to feel joy in the midst of pain. I don't have a faith that is based on denial of my humanity, an ignorance of others' suffering, or a Pollyanna attitude to all the bad things that can happen, or have happened to me, and to others....A greater joy has come for me somehow in knowing that it is okay, as a Christian, to acknowledge pain and suffering, to share it with others, and to listen to theirs...it is actually a biblical injunction....but there is a lot of happy clappy Christianity around, and I don't want to come across that way. Choosing the name joysprings was a deliberate choice....a way of saying that there are springs of joy available to us that are at the deepest place in the well of suffering...and those springs are in Christ...and knowing that He suffered all that we suffer....

There was a great workshop at Write Canada about that....the power of sharing your pain...and how to work through stuff as you write, as it comes alive again, and how to write as you work through stuff....I imagine that most of my musings will come back to this point, and counterpoint, again and again...for in a sense that is what the Christian life is all about...and life in general...finding the joy in the pain....knowing that Jesus is with us...no matter what happens..and that as we sow in tears, we shall reap in joy.