JoyLove - Sunday
I got a bit mixed up (in a good way)
So it’s been a weird few days for my Advent attentions. I kept getting confused between whether I was watching for Joy or Love. So today is a bit of a conflation of the two as they are definitely related to each other but not quite the same.
It started with three days of love - Godzilla and a pizza, Scout’s Gotcha Day, and then a beloved cat that was once lost but now found. And then came Wednesday.
I am grateful for the joy that I saw and felt as I stood at this door and rang the doorbell on Wednesday morning
My mom answered it without having any idea that her Christmas present had arrived for a surprise visit! It was so fun to see the joy and the love once she recognized I wasn’t there selling anything! It was wonderful spending a few days with her and my dad as this was the first time in well over a year since I’ve been able to be back to Colorado.
But Colorado also meant connecting with other loves and sources of joy.
But there were three other moments that really spoke deeply to me.
This illuminated star is lit each December in the foothills above Boulder. I don’t know how long it has been there but it is for sure at least 43+ years because one of my early memories was of how that star stayed illuminated through the entire time the American hostages were held in Iran. As I saw it illuminated once again this December, my heart went to those held as hostages today, those whose lives are not their own to control, and the woundedness and brokenness of our world still today.
The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. (John 1:5)
While it weighed my heart, I was also holding joylove for the fact that the light continues to shine.
The other two photos/moments are different but speak similar things.
These are moments from two separate hikes both revealing stark contrasts.
On the path, which side do I spend more time on? The side that the light hasn’t reached and is rocks and gravel that doesn’t move much or am I feeling the warming and transforming light of Love and Joy and am able to be moved by the winds of the Spirit like the grasses? I find myself on both sides but I long to feel that warming, transforming light, and to be pushed and moved by the still-speaking and still-moving Spirit.
And then the water. A similar contrast - water that was starting to freeze from the shore towards the center but the waters continued to move. Again, where do I find myself and do I allow the waters of joylove to continue to move and not freeze up. Do I remain open to how the Living Water continues to move? Like the path, I know what I long for yet also know how I often find myself in both places.
Joylove - they flow and move together. I am grateful for feeling them both in these last few days even as I continue to see the times when I don’t let them flow. And I hold those struggling to find this flow in their lives.
GPLJ
Your pics and reflections make me think that I move back and forth between the sun and the shade. Both are necessary. I can't have one without the other. Of course, life has been much more shade that sunlight for me. I find God on both sides of that narrow path to redemption.