JOY!

Joy is something every disciple of Christ needs to understand.  Let me just quote Eugene Peterson:

"Joy is not a requirement of Christian discipleship, it a a consequence.   It is not what we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.  Joy is a product of abundance; it is the overflow of vitality.  It is life working together harmoniously.  It is exuberance.  Inadequate sinners as we are, none of us can manage that for very long.

The entertainment industry in America is a sign of the depletion of joy in our culture.  Society is a bored, gluttonous king employing a court jester to divert it after an overindulgent meal.  But that kind of joy never penetrates our lives, never changes our basic constitution. The effects are extremely temporary--a few minutes, a few hours, a few days at the most.  We cannot make ourselves joyful.  Joy cannot be commanded, purchased or arranged.

But there is something we can do.  We can decide to live in response to the abundance of God and not under the dictatorship of our own poor needs.  We can decide to live in the environment of a living God and not our own dying selves. We can decide to center ourselves in the God who generously gives and not in our own egos which greedily grab.  One of the certain consequences of such a life is joy."

May the joy you experience this Christmas be more than a fleeting moment but a life time of walking in faith and obedience.

ACQUIRING THE SKILL OF SERVICE

Karl Barth defines service in this way: "In general terms, service is a willing, working and doing in which a person acts not according to his own purposes or plans but with a view to the purpose of another person and according to the need, disposition, and direction of others. It is an act whose freedom is limited and determined by the other's freedom, an act whose glory becomes increasingly greater to the extent that the  doer is not concerned about his own glory but about the glory of the other."

With this definition in place you can see how critical for us as disciples to master the art of serving on our spiritual journey.  Psalm 123 tells us, "Like servants, alert to their master's commands, like a maiden attending her lady, we're watching and waiting, holding our breath awaiting for your word of mercy."

"Unfortunately there are many so called followers of Jesus that think of religion as a far-off, mysteriously run bureaucracy to which we apply for assistance when we feel the need. We go to a local branch office and direct the clerk (sometimes called a pastor) to fill out our order for God.  Then we go home and wait for God to be delivered to us according the the specifications that we have set down."  ( Eugene Peterson)

We will never be true disciples until we learn what it means to serve.  We desperately need to learn what it is like to be fully under our Master's leadership.  Who came, by the way, TO SERVE.