Joy?

The last line verse of the assigned Psalm for this upcoming Sunday reads “You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11) The whole Psalm itself is full of joy and extolls the virtues of walking in the way of God. The last line really strikes me though because I’m not sure we often talk about or create experiences for our faith to be expressed as joy. The focal point of most of our faith lives happens on Sunday during the service. Most of the services I’ve been to and led in my life go about the same way. We sing a few hymns and respond to prayers in monotone unison. We sit down, we stand up, we shake hands, eat Jesus and go home. Except for when one of the hymns is particularly lively (a slightly rare occurrence) I wouldn’t associate any of those activities with joy would you? To me joy is laughing, dancing, jumping, and shouting. Joy makes your heart somehow beat both faster and slower, joy makes time fly instead of carefully considering how close we are to going past the all-important hour. I guess my question this week if you aren’t finding joy in your faith on Sunday are you making time for it in other places? Have you ever felt joy in your faith? What would it be like for you to experience faithful joy?

Peace,

Corey