Unrestrained JOY!

I have no idea where this came from. I just experienced pure unrestrained joy. I actually experienced it. Have you ever experienced joy? Truly? It’s crazy to even try to get my mind around it. I don’t think I can. It is not a thought or an idea. It’s not really even a feeling. It transcended everything and for that brief moment I actually was joy. I had this sense that right now, I simply am JOY. For that brief, yet eternal moment, joy was all that existed.

I take back what I said. I do know where it came from. It came out of the midst of two years of struggle. Two years of doubts, frustrations, pain, confusion, uncertainty, failings. Two years with mere glimpses of joy. Two years of battling laziness and pride and greed and anger and lust and bitterness and jealousy and deceit. For two years my heart has broken over all that is ugly and evil and painful and wrong in this world. For two years I have cried out for answers to life’s toughest questions. For answers to life itself. For two years I have tried with all my might to find God in everything I see, while much of what I have seen seems so opposed to the God I had come to know in the previous twenty years of my life.
All of life became a quest for life’s answers. Everything appeared as a question. Anything that at first seemed to give an answer gave rise to another question. Life became a never-ending maze of questions. Life became philosophy, theology, search. Life became a quest for life itself.

And just now, I saw it. A sign in the maze. Not directing me left or right. A simple message – look up. Above the maze, I saw God smiling down at me. Not pointing me which way to go. But just smiling at me with uninhibited love. A love free from all constraints. I saw God loving me. Loving me not because of any good I have done, and not withholding that love in the least because of any wrong I have done. I saw God loving me because He wants to love me. And I received joy, even became joy, directly from the source of true joy.

This is the best I can do to describe my moment of joy. I mean, I feel that I just experienced JOY straight from God! How can I even begin to put that into words?! This is simply a metaphor – I had no such “vision” of God. More than seeing, more than anything my physical senses could tell me about God, I sensed His love and joy in me. As some of my recent doubts and struggles and longings came together, I was pointed to this one amazing, and for me, undeniable, truth of God’s love. And for a moment, I experienced it wholeheartedly. And now I realize I am still here in the maze, still trying to understand. I am still wrestling with the issues that confront me in the world. I am still confused about nearly everything. But one thing has become crystal clear to me. God is here. God loves. God loves me. There is joy here. There is joy ahead. There are most certainly more struggles, pain, and doubt ahead as well, but in everything, I am convinced more than ever of the truth of Romans 8:38-39:

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I don’t think my words can do justice to what God has done in me tonight. But they don’t have to. I don’t know what this means for my life ahead. As I said, uncertainty is still present in nearly every aspect of my life. But I do have an incredible reassurance of God’s love as the driving force in my life. “Oh the glory of it all!!”