Joy

We’ve been working like proverbial maniacs on our home. We are doing the kinds of little things that make you crazy until they’re done, but on the other hand, are too small to hire anybody to help with. We did just have a friend visit for a week, and he worked pretty hard inside and outside, to get roses planted, weeds cleared, shrubs pruned etc., etc., before the traditional rain started. We just made it, the rain started yesterday. If I remember correctly from college days, it will now rain more or less constantly until April. Or May even. That’s why, of course, the Portland area is so lusciously green.

Inside we were doing a combination of adapting our new house into our home and fixing things the movers broke. We were pretty exhausted. The other day it was hot and sunny so we ran outside to spray paint some metal furniture and both overdid it. I woke up in the night with warm feet, and when I got up I could see my feet were striped (!) from the sun on my sandals.

We even worked late nights several days in a row to rebuild the benchwork for one of my train layouts (the O-gauge toy train layout … the HO-gauge model train layout will have to wait for now).

And then our friend’s visit was over and I drove him to the airport. As we left the house the morning grey began to lift, and after I dropped him off I had a stunning drive back through the trees as the sun intensified. Combined with the magical music on the radio I was brought nearly to tears with the joy not only of being back in a place that I love, but also with the radiance of creation that is so close in this environment. In the house I could see that we had restored a sense of “home,” so important for anybody but very near for folks who have just moved. For both the joy of my sense of the beauty of this environment and the comfort of home I gave thanks, in prayer, out loud even …. To top it all off, my new license plates came in the mail; as one friend put it, now we’re really citizens of Oregon!

We forget how important it is to experience joy. So often we are so busy being busy that we forget to think about simple things, the old “forest for the trees” metaphor. We work and work and work and drive and drive and drive and make lists and make new lists and plan and plan and … whew! we forget to look up at the skyline and give thanks for being, and for being here. We forget that love is that feeling of joy in our souls we experience when we walk into a place that feels like home. When we forget to experience joy we cut ourselves off from love. And when we are cut off from love we are cut off from God.

This is the very essence of “sin”—cutting ourselves off from God. Often we do it by cutting ourselves off from each other. Just as often we simply cut ourselves off altogether.

In 1 Timothy Paul writes that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.” But he goes on to say that Christ “might display the utmost patience.” It’s a good thing! But what it means is that God became incarnate in Christ to remind us to pay attention—to pay attention to our inner selves, to pay attention to our place in creation, to pay attention to each other. In these ways we restore our connection to God. Christ’s patience, God’s patience, is visible in those stunning moments when we realize we are right with creation and we give thanks.

Is there a message for lgbt people here? Of course, it is the message of my last few posts—that belonging is nurturing, that being free of the strain of defensive living opens gates of joy, that living fully into our role as created lgbt beings is as close as we can get to unity with God. It is in this perfect unity that love and life can flourish. It is this reunion, this return, this reconnection that Jesus means when says in Luke 15:10 “there is joy in the presence of the angels of God.”

 

Proper 19 (Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28); Psalm 14 Dixit insipiens; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

©2019 The Rev. Dr. Richard P. Smiraglia. All rights reserved.