FRIDAY MAY 14, 2021 JOY AND LOVE

 FRIDAY MAY 14, 2021 JOY AND LOVE

John 15:11-12  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.  My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.

First - joy.

I started in on joy yesterday.  We started with joy as “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.”

Can I trigger that feeling of great pleasure and happiness?  I contend that I can trigger it.  If my brain says “WOW - I have great pleasure and happiness”, then I have joy.  

I think we all have this experience.  You are sitting somewhere, doing nothing.  All of a sudden you get a memory, let’s say a powerful pleasant memory.  Maybe you were looking at pictures, and one picture really speaks to you.  Like the first time that I held the first two of my granddaughters, and the joy was so tangible.  These two little things WERE my granddaughters.  Joy flooded my heart.  Even as I think and write of it, I still get that powerful joy.  Am I triggering joy?  I think so.  Am I having great pleasure and happiness in those moments?  You betcha!!! 

I’ve read of how people have “happy places” in their lives.  Can you picture a happy place in your mind?  I remember reading about a person who once visited a secluded valley in the Azores and that valley became his happy place.  I have envisioned (1)being a woman as a happy place, (2) being in the hills around the western half of Grant county as a special place, and (3) that first holding of my twin granddaughters as a very happy place.  I can “go” to that happy space when I want.  I can have joy when I visit my happy places.  I can have great pleasure and happiness.

Psychologists talk of visioning as a tool to happiness.  Let’s look at a scenario

Scenario 1

You are interviewing for that special job, that job you have wanted all your life.  You picture (envision) yourself in the waiting room.  An aura is gleaming around you, you are confident and ready.  Next you are in the interview, and you are really impressing the interviewer.  That aura is growing, and you can tell the interviewer already wants to hire you.  And, finally, the phone call that night as you are offered that special job, that perfect job, and at a salary much higher than you expected.  

Such envisioning can help you be mentally prepared for the interview.

Every (senior) baseball fan remembers how Babe Ruth pointed to Center Field on October 1, 1932 (in a World Series game), and boom on the next pitch he hit a home run to Center Field.  Was that envisioning?  It is said that in his glory days, Tiger Woods would envision a ball curving into the cup when he putted.  

But, to be honest that doesn’t alway happen.  In the interviewing scenario, it might be that the manager’s kid brother, or niece, or nephew is really going to get the job.  You might impress, but “blood is thicker than water”, and the relative gets the job.  Back on the home front, you might say but God, I prayed for this job, I envisioned the interview, and I didn’t get it.  I had a happy place and it didn’t happen.

The only person I can change is ME!!!  

Back to joy, and happy places.  I find it valuable for me to take the time to meditate, to find my happy place, and to let God’s love roll over me.

A few weeks back, we looked at this favorite (excerpt here)

“The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,  he refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.”

Can you picture this?  Envision this?  I sure can.  “He refreshes my soul”.  

And, back to the first scripture “that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full. 

Jesus is speaking and says so that MY joy may be in you, and that YOUR JOY may be FULL” - not just a trickle, not half-full, but full (I’m assuming that is 100% of the time!!!)

Find that JOY, find that HAPPY PLACE, find that HAPPINESS - and let the goodness of God surround you like a thick, warm blanket on a Christmas Morning having a cup of Hot Chocolate. 

*****

(And, just in case, the rest of that scripture says “Love One Another”)

LOVE WINS!!!

HUGS!!!

Karen 

(I might not physically be in my happy place as I am still recovering from my surgery, but, my ‘real’ (which might not really be real) happy place can be as I sit down to meditate.)