What brings you Joy?

 

When I was little, my mom used to bring out a little tin tray of colorful squares for my brother and me.  She would give us paint brushes and water in plastic cups and the backs of old cereal boxes.  If we were lucky, we might get some school papers with blank back pages.  We would dip our brushes in the cup and put a drop of water on the little squares.  Almost like magic, the squares would turn from dry dusty bits of desert into vivid wet colors that then transformed the boring beige cardboard into rainbow colored unicorns, big beautiful butterflies and magical talking plants.  To Mom, I’m sure they were unidentifiable blobs of color, but for me, each piece was a vivid story with characters who had grand adventures and deep passions.

I took up painting again when my babies started being born.  We made bathtub paint where I mixed shaving cream with powder paint in an old muffin tin.  Or finger paints made from different flavors of pudding when they were still so little that paints ended up in mouths, not just fingers.

Occasionally I would take a break from the laundry and the cooking and sit down with my little ones and do some finger painting with them.  It’s not easy to do as an adult as we ‘know’ what art is, we go from trusting our own skills to making stereotypical flying birds by drawing two eyebrows joined together.  We lose our confidence because we compare ourselves to Cezanne or Emily Carr or Michelangelo, and we can’t measure up.  It was daunting but as I relaxed, it became fun.

This summer I felt the itch to get out my paints again and painted everything from wooden wells to Adirondack chairs.  Then I tried rocks, turning one into a turtle, and another into a frog.  But the one thing I wanted to paint was something that I saw every where.  Dragonflies!

They are more than pretty insects, they were predators that would devour clouds of mosquitos.  I welt up badly every summer but this year every time I went for a walk, I would find a bodyguard of dragonflies wherever I went.  And I really wanted to paint one on a rock to remind me that God was more present in my life than dragonflies.  They had come to be special after landing on Brittany’s wedding dress last year, but do you think I could find a decent picture in all the nature books I had at the lake?  Nada, zero.  And they refused to sit still long enough for me to take a photo!

Joy can be like that.  We look for joy in all the wrong places, or we try to manufacture joy, just like I tried to manufacture a photo of a dragonfly.  Joy is illusive and hard to define or describe.  I was surprised to learn the other day that on Oct. 2, 2020, the word schadenfreude, meaning joy at someone else’s misfortunes, according to Merriam-Webster, had shot up in popularity more than 30,000 per cent.  People felt joy that a certain politician was sick with a certain disease, but was it real joy, or more like a sense of karmic justice?  I had certainly felt schadenfreude at the time.  But there’s something unsettling in the feeling of satisfaction hearing that someone we dislike is suffering.  When bad things happen to bad people, is that something we should be testifying to or rejoicing in?  Is that really a Christian attitude?  Is that really joy?

The ancient psalmist wrote of a time of great joy.  It wasn’t because the people of Israel became a nation of painters.  It wasn’t because some tyrant or oppressor got sick.  It wasn’t because they saw a swarm of dragonflies or had celebrated a special event with a big party and lots of food and gifts.  It was because they felt a collective sense of hope in seeing God at work.  Something so unexpected happened to restore their faith in God that even the neighbors were surprised and noticed the astonishing change in their fortunes.  It was like the desert of dryness and tears turned overnight into a tropical paradise.  The rejoicing was spontaneous and surprising and whole-hearted.  The whole country that had faced one long hardship and disappointment after another suddenly could say, “God has done great things for us.”  And a poet turned these feelings into a song that has come down the ages as a witness to God’s commitment to the people.

Just as John was a witness to Jesus, and the psalmist was a witness to future generations, we too are called to be witnesses to God, a God that we believe will turn our tears into thanksgiving, our grief into rejoicing and our hopes into reality.  We are called to witness as best as we can that we are not alone.  We are called to live lives of honesty and authenticity, that shed tears and look into the mirror to recognize when we are not worthy to untie another’s shoelaces, yet we are still led to witness to compassionate living and justice for all.  We are called be powerful witnesses to a faith that transforms tears to joy.

God shows up in mysterious and transformative ways.  Like the day I returned to Athabasca last August and found a dragonfly on my sidewalk.  Now I have a photo and a story to share, not where I expected to find it, and definitely not where I had hoped and planned to find it, but it showed up when I wasn’t looking, as a witness to the mystery of faith, the mystery of joy and the mystery of life.  It reminds me that God is with us, we are not alone, even in times that try nations and are filled with tears.  Our joy will come and our desert times will be transformed.  And what a joyful time that will be!