Weee!
by Major Clay Gardner
When Pam was pregnant with our daughter Joy, we flew from San Francisco to Orlando, to visit her parents. Pam was still in the morning sickness phase of her pregnancy. We were concerned with the flight and for good reason. We flew all the way across country in a Boeing 737, one of the smaller airliners. On the way home we had a layover in Dallas.
Approaching Dallas it got real bumpy. I began to get concerned for Pam. I would have been more concerned except that I was afraid if I concentrated too hard on any one thing, I might get sick. Pam on the other hand (who gets carsick driving across town) was fine.
I read a story recently by a man who was on a really bumpy flight. The plane was getting tossed about pretty good. Next to him was a young boy who was obviously terrified of the whole ordeal.
The man gripped his armrests, looked over at the young traveler and said "Weeeee!!!" Then he said to the boy, "Are you scared?" the boy nodded. "But this is fun!" Suddenly the boy's expression changed and the man and the boy spent the rest of the flight enjoying the ride.
I daresay that you won't find too many people enjoying the ride on an airplane being tossed about by a windy day. Overall it really isn't a pleasant experience!” and most of us have a hard time enjoying unpleasant experiences. It takes a person of deep, inner joy to find a reason to be happy when life isn't.
Now the Apostle Paul and his disciple, Silas had plenty of reason to be happy. When they visited Philippi they had started a small Bible Study and more and more people were coming to know God through it. People were being delivered from idol worship, from sickness, from all sorts of problems; they even cast a demon out of a slave girl.
Of course the slave girl's owner had used her and her demon to tell the future for a price and he wasn't too happy about the loss of income. Likewise the idol makers were losing business. So these businessmen gave Paul and Silas the business by concocting some lies that got Paul and Silas beaten and thrown in jail.
Personally, right about here I would have gotten a bit perplexed, perhaps even discouraged. To think, the reward for all the good they were doing was a back ripped raw with a whip and being thrown in jail. I think that most of us believe that good deeds are rewarded with goodness. But what happens when it's rewarded with evil? That's when we get grumpy!
Except Paul and Silas didn't get grumpy, they got happy! The inner joy - the joy that lived deep within them - surfaced in that jail. They realized that they were being punished for doing the work of God and that if they weren't doing it very well, no one - including Satan would have cared. So they rejoiced!
1 Thessalonians 5:16, "Rejoice always," and John 11:35, "Jesus wept." are the two shortest verses in the Bible. Jesus wept has fewer letters and so technically it is the shorter verse. Except, in the original Greek, the verse Jesus wept consisted of three words while rejoice always only had two - making it the shortest verse in the Bible.
As short as these verses are, they speak to a huge truth. You see, it is when we realize that it was His great love for us that caused Jesus to weep, that we really have something to rejoice about.
Now, perhaps you're thinking, "Boy, I wish I had that kind of inner joy." Well my friend, I have good news for you: Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. We don't need to work on being more joyful or happier people - we just need to work on being more like Christ - and the joy will come.
Because "...the fruit of the Spirit is...joy!" (Gal 5:22) So enjoy the ride!
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