Tag: joy

Joy in Disappointment

On By Charis PsalloIn nature, Photography, Uncategorized2 Comments

“The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can’t stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope–and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.”

-Walter Wangerin

Sometimes people disappoint me.

Sometimes I disappoint myself.

I think disappointment is one of the things we fear most.

What if I trust this person with my sacrificial donation to a worthy cause and he absconds with it for his own personal pleasure?

What if I trust this woman with my story, but her tongue twists truth like a knotted cherry stem that becomes a mocking joke at my expense?

What if I trust these caregivers to protect my precious child and they return him with a bruise in the shape of a hand and a flimsy excuse pinned to his onesie.

These examples are hypothetical (mostly); however, many people understand the suffering that comes from a sense of betrayal and discovering people they trusted were not who they said they were. That kind of pain is real. Some of us add to the suffering by feeling ashamed for being gullible, but there is also the fact that sometimes we didn’t see the red flags sooner because we didn’t want to. They were inconvenient.

But what if the culprit is me? What if in my exuberance to illustrate a point, I break a confidence and share a story I promised not to share?

What if I accept the polite gesture of driver allowing me to merge onto a busy road as if I was entitled to it, then, only a block later, slam on my brakes, sloshing my hot coffee everywhere. What if I mutter the curse, “idiot!” at an obviously drug- impaired woman who stumbles onto the road in front of me. (Ok. That one really happened. I almost ran over her! But God forgive me, in that moment I was more upset about what an enormous inconvenience that would have been to me more than I was about how devastating it would have been to her. )

I was not who I thought I was. I felt ashamed and stupid for my choices.

I’ve been thinking a lot about scenarios like this and worse lately. A lot of people, including myself, have been deeply disappointed by betrayals of trust by people we thought we knew. I suffer with victims who have been treated as if they are expendable in the kingdom of God. Some of the substantiated reports coming out sent me into deep mourning. I lost my joy.

As a foster mother I often held inconsolable weeping children who had been abused. I rocked them for hours. As a friend I’ve listened to stories of abuse and the consequences both women and men didn’t disclose until decades later. I never thought I would see so much dishonour for the powerless in a church setting. It’s been a season of anger and mourning, but I don’t want my angry tears to congeal into bitterness, nor do I want to enable systemic corruption.

I’ve also seen the tears in the eyes of friends I treated cruelly with impatient, judgmental, or dismissive words. I am not without sin. In recent months I felt compelled to find two estranged friends from many years ago who I needed to apologize to. Eventually I learned that both had passed away. I regret not making things right sooner.

This season of sorrow has prompted me to look at things I don’t want to see. It has made me realize that even though I can’t fix anybody, I can’t afford to carry a grudge either. It may take a while to get there, but the goal is forgiveness. It has made me ask questions.

What if we confront the people who wronged the innocent or the trusting, and by holding them accountable, protect more vulnerable lambs from abuse? What if we go further? What if we are all honest with each other? What if we come humbly, together, recognizing our own vulnerability to falling, and extend grace to help them in the long process of rebuilding trust as they learn to become the people God created them to be?

What if I thank God for revealing when I miss the mark? (Publicly, if need be.) What if I apologize, make amends, and (here’s the hard part) forgive myself as I cooperate with Holy Spirit as he works in me so I can become the person he created me to be?

My examples are (mostly) hypothetical. Disappointment is real. In the past few months, I have struggled with the consequences of disappointment in Christians I felt I, or fellow-believers ought to be able to trust. Then I realized I was also in need of grace to let go of self-made comforting idols. What if godly sorrow that temporarily removes our happiness leads to an awareness of the permanent joy the author of our faith wrote into the script of his plan for our lives?

What if joy means knowing that He who began a good work in us will be faithful to complete it? What if the pain and grief-filled times are gifts of grace that motivate us to develop endurance leading to good character that can carry increased hope? What if it’s really true that God loves us as we are, but also loves us too much to leave us this way?

What if we can say –with joy– our Heavenly Father’s discipline is not fun at the time, but as we respond to his voice, and take time to sit in his presence, we discover he is actually good? What if it is his kindness that leads us to want to change? What if the sorrow of godly suffering leads us through the valley of the shadow of death to self where he prepares a feast for us where the enemies of our soul can watch but dare not touch us? What if the evidence of transformation in our lives is being able to say. with sincerity, I trust you Lord, for only you have the words of eternal life?

In you is fullness of joy, even in sorrow.

Transfiguration

On By Charis PsalloIn faith, Flowers, Photography, springLeave a comment

The difference between shallow happiness and a deep, sustaining joy is sorrow. Happiness lives where sorrow is not. When sorrow arrives, happiness dies. It can’t stand pain. Joy, on the other hand, rises from sorrow and therefore can withstand all grief. Joy, by the grace of God, is the transfiguration of suffering into endurance, and of endurance into character, and of character into hope–and the hope that has become our joy does not (as happiness must for those who depend up on it) disappoint us.

-Walter Wangerin

Radiant Hope

On By Charis PsalloIn nature, Photography3 Comments

The Lord alone is our radiant hope

and we trust in him with all our hearts.

His wraparound presence will strengthen us.

As we trust, we rejoice with an uncontained joy

flowing from Yahweh!

Let your love and steadfast kindness overshadow us continually,

for we trust and we wait upon you!

Psalm 33:20-22 TPT

Ruthless Love

On By Charis PsalloIn Just folks, Photography, Winter3 Comments

“Romantic love is blind to everything except what is lovable and lovely, but Christ’s love sees us with terrible clarity and sees us whole. Christ’s love so wishes our joy that it is ruthless against everything in us that diminishes our joy. The worst sentence Love can pass is that we behold the suffering which Love has endured for our sake, and that is also our acquittal. The justice and mercy of the judge are ultimately one.”

Frederick Buechner

The Road Back: Psalms of the Sons of Korah, “All My Springs of Joy Are in You”

On By Charis PsalloIn Christmas, Music, Photography, Water2 Comments

Then those who sing as well as those who play the flutes will say,
“All my springs of joy are in you.”

(Psalm 87:7)

There is something special about the city that King David loved. I didn’t expect my emotional reaction as we travelled up the hills to Jerusalem from Emmaus, but I found myself crying tears of joy that at last I would see this wonderful city for myself. I didn’t get to see the magnificent temple made of polished gold-toned stone that David planned and Solomon built and where the Sons of Korah sang and played instruments. I didn’t get to see Jesus’ triumphant entry into the city many years later. I do hope to see him return through those gates though.

The story of the Sons of Korah’s journey from the pit of shame to the heights of worship in the temple takes place over generations. It is a story of restoration and of grace. I hope to join them in singing my own song of restoration and grace one day too.

In the meantime, I include a link to a song of praise from my culture that I’ve often sung this time of year.

Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion. Behold Thy King cometh unto Thee!

Every Movement of My Heart

On By Charis PsalloIn autumn, nature, PhotographyLeave a comment

Lord, you know everything there is to know about me.

You perceive every movement of my heart and soul,

and you understand my every thought before it even enters my mind.

You are so intimately aware of me, Lord.

You read my heart like an open book

and you know all the words I’m about to speak

before I even start a sentence!

You know every step I will take before my journey even begins.

Psalm 139:1-4 TPT

I took one of those personal trivia quizzes that pop up every once in a while on social media. Yes, I know they are designed to search for data that sells us (the product) to potential advertisers. They might think they know me, but they don’t. Not really.

The test asked about hidden talents. I wrote “invisibility.”

Not long before, I ran into some people I had grown up with. We were either in the same class at school or in the same Sunday School class or youth group for years. One person I had known well and spent time with a couple of times a week for sixteen or seventeen years, couldn’t remember me, although she remembered my cousin with the same surname who had only lived in the same town for two years. Another guy vaguely remembered me as the really quiet girl who was the friend of the really brainy girl. That was at the same school where a teacher insisted to my parents that I wasn’t in his class. When they pointed out my name on the register he said, “Well then, she ought to learn to speak up.”

I have learned to speak up, much to the chagrin of those who complain that now I talk too much. They are right, but my response to that criticism tends to be to want to put on the invisibility cloak of my childhood again and try to content myself with watching life from the shadows like I did before I let God heal the shame that held me there so long. Sitting in the dark singing another chorus of “Nobody Likes Me” is not nearly as uplifting as singing a chorus of “Jesus, Lover of My Soul.” It’s not a healthy response.

The truth is nobody but God really knows us; we don’t even know ourselves. The search for connection comes from the search for our Creator who knows everything about us and still loves us. He is not disappointed in us because he had no illusions about our state in the first place. It has always been his intention to save us from the messes we have made and the resulting consequences of guilt and shame.

To be known and understood and loved is joy. Without God we are in a constant state of looking to other imperfect people or inanimate things to fill our built-in need for love from someone all-knowing and totally trustworthy, someone who truly knows us, someone who sees the ugliness but moves to bring out the beauty he placed there.

Steffany Gretzinger sings about the joy and hope in being known and loved by Love Himself.

Here

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Photography, spring, Trees and forestsLeave a comment

Get up, my dear friend, fair and beautiful lover—come to me! Look around you: Winter is over; the winter rains are over, gone! Spring flowers are in blossom all over. The whole world’s a choir—and singing! 

(Song of Solomon 2:11,12 MSG)

Sometimes, when shrill voices tell us to look at what’s happening there, and there, or over there, we overlook the still, quiet voice of the Lover of our souls inviting us to look here. I was looking for photo-worthy balsam root blossoms that thrive in the Okanagan. I wanted to photograph a patch, but they all seemed to grow in places where I couldn’t stop the car, or places too hard for me to walk to.

When I told my daughter my frustration she said, “Oh, we have some here in the forest beside our house where the children play.”

I found them! What a wonderful place to be a child! I’m so happy for them!

When I was a young child, our little house was in a eastside neighbourhood squeezed between a meat packing plant, an oil refinery, and a railway yard. No matter which way the wind blew it never smelled like a forest of flowers and evergreen trees.

When I was a child, I carried worries that were too heavy for a little kid. I thought God was mad at me all the time like everyone else seemed to be. I didn’t know that he actually liked me and wanted to be with me. It was many years before I could hear him calling me to come away with him, not to do a job for him, but because he loved me and wanted to be with me.

It’s so easy to say, “I’ll be happy when this is over, or when this is done.” We can have joy now, in this moment. I hear the loving invitation of my Lord inviting me to leave stress and worry behind, to come away with him, and appreciate the song that beauty sings here in the secret place he created for the two of us, here where he made it accessible. Here –in my heart.

Sorrow and Joy

On By Charis PsalloIn Photography, spring3 Comments

From then on Jesus began to tell his disciples plainly that it was necessary for him to go to Jerusalem, and that he would suffer many terrible things at the hands of the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but on the third day he would be raised from the dead. (Matthew 16:21 NLT)

Sometimes I wonder what it must be like for people coming to Canada from tropical countries. If you have never seen it, would you believe it if someone told you, “There is a season coming when all the trees and plants and grasses will die? The world will be too cold for them to live and if you are not careful to find shelter and a source of heat you could die too. But don’t worry. After a few months of cold and long nights, they will come back to life again.”

I wonder if someone who has never heard of this or experienced it before would respond, “How exciting!’ or would they say, “No way! We will protect our gardens nd fields!” Many immigrants have told me their first winter was a shock and felt like it was never going to end.

Jesus told his disciples clearly, and more than once, precisely what was going to happen. When it did, they were shocked and dismayed. For all his declarations that Jesus would not be mistreated and killed under his watch, Peter had to face the fact that he was dead wrong. Jesus was arrested, humiliated, abused, and killed. The shock was so traumatizing it took a time before they remembered that he told them he would be raised after three days.  But how? They still had no grid for that.

Yesterday, I passed by a vine-covered wall. There has been no sign of life on those bare branches for months. Now there is. What appeared to be dead is awakening to new life.

Today’s prompt word for Creative Meditations for Lent is Sorrow/Joy. Sometimes terrible things happen. We reel with the shock of photos of bodies in the streets in the Ukraine. We wail at the news of friends dying of Covid and other afflictions after we prayed with fervour and declared they would not die. We make plans for next week, next year, and the next decades and deny as much as possible that we live in mortal bodies that 1 Corinthians 15 reminds us are perishable, even though as believers in Christ we are promised eternal life.

Perhaps the lesson we can learn from new green leaves on a bare vine is this: Even though we have no grid for resurrection from the dead in new bodies, it will happen. There is more to the passage on running the race than I quoted earlier this week.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. (Hebrews 12: 1-3)

Oh, how I love the spring! What a harbinger of much greater joy!

And Then…

On By Charis PsalloIn Flowers, Music, Photography, springLeave a comment

balsamroot ch rs

Sometimes it takes me a while to figure out where my emotions are coming from. I agree with people who say we ought not to be led by emotions, but I don’t discount them. God created us with emotion for a reason. Jesus demonstrated a full range of emotional experience, and demonstrated their rightful place. Like the Psalmist I have been asking my soul, “Why are you downcast? Why are you disquieted?”

Grief has roots that tangle under the surface. You can’t tug on one without unsettling memories of other losses and separations. This time of pandemic-led physical separation, although not permanent (we hope), is also stirring up feelings of old losses. I miss my loved ones. I miss my friends. I miss my freedom. I know we shall soon meet again, but these nebulous emotions all end up in the same pot like some strange concoction of lament that ignores reason. It feels like grief.

I’ve been feeling a bit down and unusually nostalgic the last few days. Old movies, old songs, old photos, old recipes, and even old cars make me laugh, but also shed tears. This morning, it being Mother’s Day, I thought about my mother, who passed away eleven years ago. I wish I could sit in her kitchen and tell her about my day. I read many posts from motherless children and childless mothers on Facebook, so I know I am not the only one who is aware of the ambivalent feelings this day evokes.

Then I remembered this week also marks the anniversary of separation from my Dad as well.

Time shrinks and stretches with age, moreso without the usual daily landmarks that keep us oriented. What day is it? Has it been three or four years since I received the call that Dad died in his sleep? The fence needs painting again. Didn’t I just do that? Was it really almost sixty years since Daddy took the photo of Mom serving Kool-aid to the pretty little girls in their birthday party dresses? The house I grew up in shows up on Google maps. It is dwarfed by the trees my brother and I planted as seedlings we received at school. When did that happen?

Part of prayer is paying attention to the stirrings in our hearts as we lean in to hear our heavenly Father. God often speaks to me through music. As I asked him to bring clarity to this messy emotion a song started to play in my mind. It is Brahms’ setting of John 16:22. In English it reads:

“So will you also pass through a time of intense sorrow when I am taken from you, but you will see me again! And then your hearts will burst with joy, with no one being able to take it from you!” (from The Passion Translation that seeks to include emotional content)

These were Jesus’ words to his friends before he was taken from them. We know the next part of the story – that he conquered death and appeared to them again before ascending to his place with the Father. He told them, on that same evening he gave the warning, that something better was coming. He was sending the Holy Spirit to advocate, teach, comfort, and empower in his place.

We have the advantage of living on the other side of the cross. We know loss here and now, but we also know that Holy Spirit will never leave. He reminds us of the promise that is for both here and now and even more in the future: “Then your hearts will burst with joy with no one being able to take it from you!”

 

Why, my soul, are you downcast?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and my God.

(Psalm 42:11 NIV)

Laughter in the Rain

On By Charis PsalloIn Fields, Mountains, Photography, Uncategorized2 Comments

Okotoks west ch nov2 08 006

The Lord alone is our radiant hope
and we trust in him with all our hearts.
His wrap-around presence will strengthen us.
 
As we trust, we rejoice with an uncontained joy
flowing from Yahweh!
 
Let your love and steadfast kindness overshadow us
continually, for we trust and we wait upon you!

Psalm 33:20-22 TPT

I’ve woken to the same song playing in my head for about three weeks. The Lord speaks to me through songs and I’ve learned to pay attention. (I wrote about hearing God’s voice through music here.) This phrase in particular, from a song from the seventies by Neil Sedaka, keeps repeating:  I hear laughter in the rain.

This morning I read my Facebook and Twitter feed and felt the despair of so many people in my home province of Alberta as well as across the nation. The questions arise. Who can you trust? Who is telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth? What is the motive behind actions that seem to intentionally divide and disempower? For that matter, what is the motive behind the motive behind that motive?

Ideas have consequences and what is in a person’s heart will eventually play out in actions. In the meantime we pray for the truth to be exposed and guard our hearts against loss of hope.

I do believe we are headed into a storm. It seems strange to be singing about joy in perilous times, yet the One who sees from a higher perspective is not in despair. In Him there is joy. Can I admit my own first reaction to that statement was, “Are you kidding me?”

Upon reflection, I realized that He is not kidding me. God is not in despair. He is full of joy.

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi demonstrates what it means to respond to God’s heart instead of reacting to frustration. This is coming in the opposite spirit of whatever the enemy of our souls is trying to convince us to absorb.

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy;

O Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
To be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

I hear the Voice of the Source of love and kindness invite me to enjoy the rainy day and walk hand in hand with the One I love.

He’s got this.

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