When the joy runs out (a guest post for Rachel Held Evans)
Thanks for all the cheers and the love and the messages and texts and tweets and posts yesterday, dear readers. I was overwhelmed by and so grateful for this community. It was a good day.
Today I’m over at Rachel Held Evans blog sharing a bit of my journey into a new way of experiencing prayer. What happens when the joy runs out? When the vessels are empty? Here’s a peek:
I’ve had a Sandra McCracken song on repeat in the car these past few days, Oh for grace to be somebody other than this / To be loved with a love that I cannot resist.
I’m sure I sang that line to the skies long before I found Sandra’s words. And now, when she sighs them through the speakers of my car, I nod my head. Yes.
“We want kid music! Mommy!” one of the voices whines behind me. I hold those words a moment longer.
To be loved with a love that I cannot resist.
*
Last month, my pastor preached a sermon on John 2, that story of Jesus’ first miracle. A wedding that runs out of wine. Water remade blood red.
“What Jesus is doing here is replacing the joy,” my pastor said. The party had failed in its hospitality and that’s embarrassing, of course. But under that story of water turned to wine is something bigger. It’s a story about everything we strive to fill our lives with, everything that fails to make us whole.
“Jesus is saying, ‘I know what you’re looking for and it’s not found here. It’s found in me,’” my pastor said.
Found. There’s that word. I always come home to that word. “In the greatest pain and suffering of our life is when we really understand that the joy actually does run out,” my pastor said. “Look at where you’re frantic and that’s probably the place where you’re trying to find joy.”
Look where you’re frantic.
Click here to read the rest at Rachel’s place!
(And, as always, I love to hear from you. You can leave me a comment here!)