sparking joy

A Touch of the Bubbly

Posted on by Betsy

I have a friend who is best described as “bubbly.” Her demeanor is always positive, glass-half-full, and joyful. I don’t know how she does it, as I know that she has had tragedy in her life and things haven’t always been easy. But the bubbles well up in her and escape, infusing their celebration into every encounter. She is a woman of deep faith, and I think that is why.

Today we read about woman who encountered water that was so lively, it ended up being bubbly:

John 4:1-26 (New Revised Standard Version)

1 Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard, “Jesus is making and baptizing more disciples than John”— 2 although it was not Jesus himself but his disciples who baptized—3 he left Judea and started back to Galilee. 4 But he had to go through Samaria. 5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon. 7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” 8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.) 9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.) 

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” 11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? 12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” 

13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.” 15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

 In fancy restaurants in Europe, the first question you are asked upon being seated is, “Still, or gas?” This startled me in Italy, as I don’t ever want gas from a meal. (!) But of course they are offering two different types of water: still, which is flat, or gas, which is bubbly and effervescent. The still water is what comes out of the tap. It is the mundane, ordinary alternative to the sparkling exuberance of gas water.

 Jesus is the latter. He is lively and brings life. Once uncorked, he explodes onto a scene and changes it for the better. Remember his first miracle at the wedding at Cana of Galilee? He transformed still, flat water into the best wine ever served. I wonder if, in keeping with his nature, it was actually a sparkling rose, or a lovely Prosecco….

Jesus is the essence of life, and he is necessary for life, but not just in the way he sustains it. Rather, he brings effervescent joy to your life. Living water is ours to indulge in whenever we open ourselves wide and take it in. He reminds us that he came to give life, and the life he gives is “abundant life.”

This is a cause for reflection if you find yourself today in a state that is joyless and lacking in that abundance that Jesus promised. Sometimes life situations can knock you off your pins and bring sadness, doubt, anxiety, depression, and ennui. When that happens, it is good to remember that there is a time for every season and every matter under the sun, as we read in Ecclesiastes 3. This reminds us that God is the master Timekeeper, and those low places are under his control just as surely as the high places are. If you are low today, know that you are not alone. Jesus has walked the lonely valley and he walks with you in your desert, too. The psalmist reminds us that joy comes in the morning, but sometimes it is a very long night.

 Your challenge today is to find a moment of pure, abundant, sparkling life, even if you are feeling a little down. Perhaps the best way to find it is to give it to someone else. So go ye therefore and sparkle up someone’s day! Be the abundant joy for someone else, and see what effervescence comes back to you.

Living Water by Michelle Robertson

Sparking Sadness

Posted on by Betsy

Yes, that is a picture of mismatched, old, worn-out socks. I took it against a nice background, since my epiphanies always happen at the Water’s Edge, but it is indeed a nasty pile of socks. These aren’t even my socks, but my husband’s. He walked down the steps with them last week and declared, “I have decided that these socks no longer spark joy.” In my mind I was thinking, “Honey, they haven’t sparked joy for about ten years, especially the red ones.”

His comment was a result of the Marie Kondo phenomenon. Kondo is a television personality who brilliantly came up with the idea to do shows helping people become more organized and efficient with their homes and their usage of space. Disciples of Kondo will recognize the “spark joy” reference. Her greatest teaching is that you should hold an object in your hands, and if it doesn’t spark any joy in your heart, you need to toss it out. I read a news report that said that once this idea went viral, thrift stores everywhere were suddenly overwhelmed with joyless donations. Her thinking is pretty revolutionary, don’t you think? But more importantly, don’t you wish you had come up with it first?? I sure do!

A friend of mine coined another phrase to describe the opposite of sparking joy. She said that she realizes there are things in her home that only “spark sadness.” She described how a beautiful figurine that looked just like her dog now sparks sadness, as the dog has passed away. I have a favorite photograph in my living room of my in-laws holding hands as they crossed the finish line at the Turkey Trot many years ago. Since my mother-in-law died, this picture of her smiling in her Penn State hat and wearing her race number pinned to her sweatshirt often sparks sadness for me. She will never do that race again, which was the highlight of our Thanksgiving day for many years. We keep things like these to honor the sweet bitterness of lost loves, but sometimes holding them truly sparks sadness, and rightfully so.

There is a difference between things that no longer spark joy and things that outright spark only sadness. Sometimes relationships are like that. They can go fallow for awhile, and temporarily fail to spark joy. Then a reconciliation or reunion happens and turns it around. But other times, the thought of them brings only a sweet-less bitter that is permanent. And that’s when you know it is time to let go.

This applies to anything that is bringing you despair and angst. When past mistakes, regrets, guilt, sin, poor choices, failures, bad relationships, hurts, anger, betrayals, etc. bring nothing useful to your life and only drag you deep into a place of darkness, let it go.

Paul calls us to reach forward and grasp what Christ has already planned for us:

Philippians 3:13 “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 

Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Remember when you were learning how to cross the monkey bars at the playground? Somebody held you up, and you grasped a bar. Then to move forward, you had to let go of the bar and grasp the next one in front of you. Otherwise your arms would eventually wear out and you would drop to the ground.

Forget what is behind. Strain toward what is ahead. Jesus took hold of the cross so that you could take hold of life, and he promised it would be a life ABUNDANT with meaning, purpose, and joy. So whatever you are holding today that sparks only sadness in your heart, let it go. Jesus has so much more for you than that.