‘Joy to the world’ the well-known opening line of a much loved song
Yet I’m not sure we often spend that much time thinking about it, even as we sing along
what we mean by that teeny tiny word:
Joy.
It’s a little word. Usually the big hitters are well, bigger.
At least 4 letters! (love, hope, home…)
However it’s a great word,
An awesome thing,
That coincidentally cannot score less than 13 when played on a Scrabble board
And if you play it carefully you could easily score well over 50
Played right,
Joy is basically a gamechanger
And it was born in a manger
Joy is not happiness yet we sometimes conflate
Those moments of fleeting lightness and emotions elate
For the deep abiding soul hug,
Of yourself being shone and reflecting out
From deep inside, that pureness of you
When you’re fully alive and embracing of the moment you’re in now.
That is joy.
There is beauty and good in the world all around
And we’re asked to live out and point out, that all the time, God is good
And if good all the time, then surely joy should resound?
It should jangle and leave a mark
Joy adds up, with a cumulative score
When you notice it, enjoy it, and invest it for more
Maybe we need to treat joy like loose change
That by itself may seem small
But it can be found round the oddest of angles
And it’s useful and jangles and helps our doubt untangle.
Take note to yourself of what you do, who you know,
That sparks joy for you
Then celebrate, enjoy, express
That warmth, blossoming up from the tip of your toes
Which as you share it, becomes more and overflows.
Joy has a pureness, uncluttered and clear
That makes the most of now, and points forward into a brighter future coming near
When I wrote this it was before the UK General election, 2019
And I had no clue at all if joy could be something I’d feel able to mention
But the reality I realised is that no matter what happened
Whether we’ve gone red, yellow, purple or blue
Our seeking of joy in such tumultuous times will, either way, be due.
Society is hurting, there’s pain and anger in spades
Divisions divide us, communities barricade,
sweeping statements that slur spat out in the heat
Outsiders pushed out, self-centred motivations repeat
Across our damaged and bruised dis-united nation.
So while Joy might feel far flung
A victory is won
If we can try to find ways to bring ‘joy to the world’
It’s needed, for sure and how good would it be to hear heaven and nature sing?
What joy might that bring?!
Joy lasts longer than the emotion of happiness
It’s more a state of being, it’s deeper, wholer, makes up for any less
the “More” that we’re aiming for.
When we pray from Romans ‘may you have joy and hope in believing’
we’re saying we want our faith to be rich and grounded,
long lasting and able to endure what-ever life throws at us
Be it austerity, sanctions or cuts,
We need our faith to be steeped in joy,
Built on a relational sense, an experiential knowledge of something
That we might struggle to explain, but we can still show, and share..
Joy adds up, with a cumulative score
When you notice it, enjoy it, invest it for more
So we empty our pockets, gather the moments of joy that jangle
Spend them, invest them, together they’ll wrangle
The chaos of life through the joy in the manger.
We can build a better place, Joy is the Gamechanger
Charlotte Noppen is…
