inspired by Matthew 25:1-13
Adapted from “Joy,” in Sermon Seasonings,
by Ralph Milton, Wood Lake Books, 1997, out of print.

The classic line from the old “meller-drammer” has the suitor pleading with Dad for the hand of his daughter. Dad gives in. “Take her and make her happy.”

Daughter squeals her delight, races into her lover's arms, and they live happily ever after.

“It don't hardly happen that way no more.”

Daughter has discovered she doesn't belong to daddy, and more importantly, that her handsome hero, no matter how muscular his biceps, can't make her happy.

I can't tell you how many fantasies I've had about promotions I desired or achievements I struggled for, knowing that if I got it, I would be happy. Doesn't work worth a hoot.

I knew when we got married that it was my job to make Bev happy. I didn't manage that.

Then I hoped to raise perfect children who would make me happy. Nope! Good kids and lots of good times, but they couldn't bring that fundamental kind of all-the-time happiness I was looking for.

Now finally after seven decades of looking for something or someone to make me happy, the penny drops.

If you want love – if you want happiness, you've got to choose to make your life, your mind, your body, your soul – make yourself ready to feel the love, to see the happiness, when it comes.

And that is doubly true of that uniquely Christian concept of joy.

I've never yet come across a satisfying definition of joy, and that may be because joy can't be defined. It can be experienced.

I experienced it at the bedside of my dying brother, as I sat there, crying my eyes out, trying to focus on a snapshot of my newborn grandson – born just a few weeks earlier. Yes, that was joy. Grief and tears can be joyful.

Joy and happiness are not a matter of ignoring pain and singing loud choruses of “Look on the sunny side of life...” It's not a matter of feeling good. Running away from pain may postpone the hurt a little while, but it'll get you far worse in the end. My doctor tells me everyone has a specific “pain point,” the place on your body where the hurt will focus. “It's your weakest spot,” he tells me.

I get headaches. But you can experience joy in the middle of a migraine. Yes you can.

Joy is a baby born in a stinking stable. Joy is the cry of hope from the mouth of an infant, as you sit there up to your backside in cow manure. Joy is looking at a picture of your grandson while your only brother is dying.

It is far easier to focus on the crud. On the dying. On the pain.

We can choose the joy, if we choose to be ready for it when it comes to us. When we are ready for that deep form of happiness that comes in the cry of a baby and in the memory of riding on the shoulders of an older brother. We choose joy when we listen for the voice of God over the noise of the traffic.

It takes some doing, but it's there.

Keeping our lamps full of oil and well trimmed is the choice we make to live the joy when it comes into our life.

Ralph's list of readings and stories