Joy in God's People

A few years ago, our church sent a missions team to Houston Texas to help rebuild homes that were destroyed by Hurricane Harvey. On our final night in Houston, the team was debriefing the week in a small upstairs room in St. Andrews Presbyterian church. Team members were talking about the high points of their week and the low points of their week. I asked "who here is tired?" Everyone raised their hand. I then asked, "But who here feels full?" And everyone raised their hand. Life doesn’t have to be easy to be joyful. In fact, ease of living and joy of heart have little to do with each other. Joy is not the absence of hardship, but rather the presence of Jesus. That week we were physically poured out for the benefit of a couple different families. We were doing manual labor for the week in the Texas heat and humidity. Yet we all felt full from the experience. Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi is a letter dripping with joy and surprisingly so. The author is writing from prison. As we begin our study in this beautiful letter, my prayer is that your love of Jesus would grow and in turn joy would fill you in spite of your circumstances.