As you can see in the picture, there is a rock on my coffee table that says "joy" on it.  Opposite it is a black stone.  Between it is a cross, in the center a candle, on the left Jesus holding a boy and his other arm around a girl, and on the right a man washing the feet of another.  Oops, I just noticed I left a coaster on the table.  I don't think there is any symbolic value in it! (Lots of practical value, however!)

I brought the black stone from my table at a seminar on suicide a few years ago.  I keep it as a reminder of how dark things can get in people's lives.  I brought the rock from a spiritual direction training where at the end of the week we were to pick out a stone and write something on it that we needed to surrender or hold loosely.  I wrote joy on mine.

Sometimes I get glimpses of reality in a way that leaves me deeply moved, and this wonderful sense of joy bubbles to the surface.  Some of the times this has happened is those moments when I am most aware of my sinfulness and God's gracious forgiveness at the same time.  There is nothing quite like knowing one is forgiven - clean, alive, and sparkling!  I also experience this joy when I get to witness others' experience of this.  There is something miraculous when all one can see is blackness and the light of Grace and Truth shines in such a way that all that is left is radiance.

Of course one never finds joy by looking for it.  Joy is often a by-product of of sorrow, of coming to the end of one's attempts to make life be the way one would like it to be and discovering another world on the other side.  As Kahlil Gibran says, "Your joy is your sorrow unmasked."  It's on the other side of grief - giving up that which we hold onto so tightly because it was never to be possessed in the first place.  But we need to experience the pain of our grasping in order to experience the joy of releasing.

Happiness is wonderful . . . and fragile (depends on what happens).  Joy is deep and rich, and has nothing to do with circumstances.  It has everything do with perception and involves an awareness that nothing can happen that leaves us without what we need. Jesus resurrection from the dead is the greatest statement that love is more powerful than death.  Someone has said something like, "You can bury Truth, but you can't keep it from rising from the dead."  All deception is temporary. In the end everything gets revealed, and what a glorious day that will be! (At least for those who love the truth and are waiting for its revelation.)

We joined with our daughter Janelle, her husband Simeon, and a good-sized group of family and friends last Saturday afternoon at the river in Columbus (Ohio) to share in a memorial service for little "Elijah" who left Janelle's womb too early a couple of weeks ago. (16 weeks from conception)  The saddest moment for me was when they scattered the tablespoon of ashes on the river.  It shouldn't have to be that we have to wait so long to get to know him. 

What in the world does this have to do with joy?  For me, there is joy in knowing that the depths of grief can be felt to the fullest and deepest, and Life can be trusted to be there, larger than it all, encircling the pain of the brokenness of the world and giving grace and life to it, as Jesus did on his cross.  It really is going to be all right!

"Jesus, the way you took to joy goes against just about everything in me . . . but not quite.  There's enough of a thirst and hunger for all that is Good that I am drawn to be willing to yield to the necessary suffering that releases that life within that is You.  Will you continue to whet my hunger and thirst for the Good so that I don't settle for cheap substitutes?  I will be forever grateful.  Amen"

Sheldon Swartz, M.A, LMFT works with individuals, couples, and families to identify the ways of life and death in their lives and help uncover the motivation to choose that which leads to life, whether it be through counseling or spiritual direction.