As you may recall from my last post, I had a sneaky suspicion that maybe God wasn't ready to have me share a message this week. And now, two days later, I realize why. Since then, a few events have happened in my life that have been the inspiration for this post. Praise God for his wonderful timing.
About a month ago, I attended a conference with my youth group. In his last keynote talk, the speaker told us a story about him as a child. His parent had undergone a nasty divorce and his father essentially packed up and was out of their lives in one day. He spoke about the experience he had walking through the airport to meet his father for one of the few visits he had with him each year. And he said that although his heart was full of joy and was bursting with excitement, he attempted to mask his excitement in his outward appearance. He didn't want his father to know that he was excited to see him. But he said that his attempts were always in vain; not being able to contain his joy, he would sprint into the arms of his father.
I was thinking about this story in relation to our own experiences of joy. I firmly believe that our loving Father grants each of us moments in our lives in which he concretely reveals himself to us. And in these experiences in which his love for us is so powerful, our hearts are inflamed and filled with true joy.
But the truth is that so often, we try to contain this joy. Like the story, we try to hide from the world the joy we experience within our hearts. We put on masks to keep others from knowing the joy we have felt through our reception of God's love. And I think there are many reasons why this happens. Maybe we think it's prudent not to talk about the joy that God has given us when maybe we don't think that has happened to others. Maybe it's hard to even put into words how we have experienced God. Maybe it's scary for us to enter into a conversation with someone that includes intimate details about our own typically private relationship with God. Or maybe, quite frankly, we'd rather rejoice in things like the amazing ice cream flavor we just tasted (yes..that comment is from personal experience), the flattering new outfit we just purchased, the new movie we saw, or the achievement we received at work or school. Why is it that when it comes to our spiritual gains, we contain our joy? Why when it comes to our experiences of God's profound love are we shy to tell others about them? Why do we hide our joy?
Pope Benedict XVI once said: "Something I constantly notice is that unembarrassed joy has become rarer". But this is what the world needs, friends. We need people willing to go out on a limb to express their love for God to a world that is starving for it. We need people to be vulnerable to share with their friends, their family members, and their peers the way that God has changed their lives. We need to be willing to share our experience of joy so that we can depict to the world a God whose love is transformative and worth celebrating.
So what experience is God asking you to share today? Maybe you finally made a decision about where to go to college and the relief you experience is cause for joy. Maybe God revealed himself to you through Scripture in a powerful way. Maybe your experience volunteering brought you to a deeper realization of the beauty of service. Or maybe the suffering you've endured or the worry you've been facing about the future has been lifted. Today, let us rejoice unashamedly in the way God has shown himself to us. Let us confidently express our praise and be willing to help others understand the love of the Father through the way we proclaim our experiences.
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