Joy Unseen

     Almost three years ago, in June of 2010, I was hit by a truck while riding my bike home.  I don't know what happened because I was unconscious until I was in the ambulance.  My bike was destroyed.  I had a gash in my head and road rash on my shoulder and back.  I was in the emergency room for about three hours, and when I left I had seven staples in my head and an undiagnosed broken collar bone; it was a few days later when I learned that it was broken.
     This was a terrible situation, and it's my sincere belief that God saved my life that day.  Saved me from what could have been or should have been death.  And I believe I must have realized this at the time, because what I remember most about that night is that I was filled with joy.  Strange to think it, stranger still to say it, but the most vivid thing I remember about being in the ER with a busted head and shoulder is how my heart was full with the joy of the Lord.
      If there's one thing that a lot of Christians aren't experiencing in their lives it's joy.  Joy is a funny thing.  We tend to think of it as synonymous with happiness, or as a heightened sense of happiness, but joy and happiness are two different things.  Joy comes from God.  It is a spiritual state, just as peace is a spiritual state.  It's a thing we get from God that has no direct connection to our physical circumstances.  This is why I was able to be joyful while bleeding from the head in the ER.  It's why I had joy over the next couple of months as my insurance company worked out a settlement and my wife and I tried to stay sane between doctor's appointments and medical bills.  I wasn't happy about the pain, the expense, the stress.  But I had joy in spite of it all.
     Like most everything in this walk we call the Christian Life, joy requires the sustained practice that Paul describes in 2 Corinthians 4:18, that of fixing our eyes on the Lord.

"Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." (2 Corinthians 4:16-18)

  We have joy in our life when we're focused on the right things.  Ironically the right thing to focus on is "that which is unseen," which must mean that, though unseen, we can still fixate on them.  It's tricky.  When I was in the hospital, there were many things to fix my eyes on: the nurses and doctors, the MRI machine, the cuts and bruises and breaks on my body.  But for some reason the unseen caught my attention and I looked there instead.  It was so much more rewarding to look at God and His goodness in the middle of my light and momentary trouble, rather than to stare at that very trouble and wonder, Now what?      If as the scripture says "The joy of the Lord is my strength," then without His joy I'm going to be weak.  Such has been the case in my life.  Regardless of circumstances, good or bad, I have found that this is always true: when I lean on the Lord and walk in His joy, I make it.  I get through the stressful times, the uncertain times, the times when money is tight or the arguments are plentiful.  I have the strength to continue in life because I have a strength that is not my own.  In fact, it is precisely in some of my darkest times that I can look back and see that I experienced the most consistent joy.  I had joy in spite of the circumstances because I always had God in the midst of the circumstances.      We are especially prone to forget this, but all we need in this life is to consistently fix our eyes on the Lord.