Join in the Joy
Through the years, I have frequently preached about joy. It is more than an emotion (although it includes emotion); rather, it is a settled attitude, a stable and sturdy approach to life that focuses us on the things that matter now and forever. Joy is much greater and much more powerful than happiness, which is event or circumstance driven. There is nothing wrong with happiness. It is certainly better than unhappiness. Also, we have different personalities. For example, my wife is happy-go-lucky. Of course, she has every reason to be, being married to me. However, not everyone can be married to me. We need something more substantial than happiness; that something is joy. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
Psalm 126 is a passage that we best know because of the old Gospel song “Bringing in the Sheaves,” based on verse 6. My mother had a cousin who, as a young girl, loved to sing this hymn in church. However, she thought that the words were “bringing in the sheets.” Back then, the washing was done by hand; I suppose that having all that hard work completed was a source of joy! For the Israelites who sang this psalm (as they did when traveling to Jerusalem for the feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles), there was joy in the remembrance of God’s deliverance of the nation from captivity. Built into that joy, though, is the “affliction” that Paul wrote about in I Thessalonians 1:6. Freedom from captivity is a wonderful thing, but it includes the reality of decades spent in exile. Moreover, not all of the Jewish people came back: many died in Babylon, and some at the time of the writing of Psalm 126 had not yet returned (verse 4). Still, though, God’s deliverances, large or small, must be sources of joy. The greatest intervention of God is, of course, salvation from sin and Satan and death and hell, readily available to all through faith in God the Son, Jesus Christ. As our Pastor Stuart often said, “It’s better further on,” and we find joy in that certainty. May we find additional joy in the fact that our Lord is still bringing in the sheaves – His harvest of souls continues.