Mining Joy

Mining Joy, that’s how she phrased it. Brilliant.

My grandad was a coal miner. I have dozens of pictures of black faced men whose image is visible only by the light on their forehead. 

Grandpa lived and worked under the ground looking for the blackest of coal to bring the warmest of heat and brightest of lights.

Isn’t that the perfect image of mining joy.

God defined as the joy of our salvation. We memorize that as little children in Sunday School, but sometimes, perhaps most days that joy must be sought and dug and desired.

We content to easily with happiness.

We stop or at least I do with the newest curtains or the stellar report card or the cleanest of counter. He sees so much higher and wider that we must refocus to even catch a glimpse of joy.

It is deep below the truest heart and high above the most gorgeous sky. It is everything to the believer yet so elusive to our exhausting days.

It is not just the end, it is the middle and the beginning. It is the treasure that is revealed to the heart that seeks. It is the gift of faith and the hope of every single moment as well as tomorrow.

It is what makes us His, if we choose it. It is what draws us to Him and what draws others to us. It is the extraordinary magnet of a magnificent God that asks us to rise out of the dark to see, feel and hear His warmth and light. The lens of joy causes us to see His hand over us, in us and working through us.