Good morning…
On a day set aside to celebrate the American worker, this is a hard Labor Day for many. Job loss. Unemployment. How to pay the bills? Instability. Threat of violence. Uncertainty about the future. Many feel torn apart, as discombobulated as this shadow photo taken by my artist friend Corinne Adams.
“So many colleagues and amazing joint programs have been forced to go,” one friend wrote this weekend. “The whole thing is sad and surreal. How could this happen? The CDC. The world. Our health. Each one endangered.”
Within the next moment I revisited colorful words recently sent by a friend, a friend who has been reshaped by great grief.
Hard stuff is happening, every day. Might we practice finding moments of joy amid the chaotic mess?
The journal I am currently writing through matches similar colors and sentiment. As I process the hard stuff with God each day, I seek to uncover the track of joy running alongside the track of sorrow in my own underground railroad.
Remember Kay Warren’s definition from page 30 of Choose Joy?
“Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in all things.”
God is in control of the details. Ultimately everything is going to be alright. In the midst of all the hard things, we can intentionally choose to praise God.
The deepest pains may linger through the night, but joy greets the soul with the smile of morning (Psalm 30:5b, VOICE).
Daily inspiration comes, in one form or another. Just now, as I am writing in the middle of the night, an uplifting song comes into my inbox. We can experience the song of relentless joy rising up from the depths of life’s challenges.
Can you feel it? Yes, we can can!
…Sue…
