Nicholas Lockwood October 2nd 2016 ~ Working for Joy

Working for Joy.Someone once said that the great human dream is to be loved and to love.  To be loved is fundamentally necessary for every child and growing into the maturity to love is the aim of our bringing them up.  The outcome of loving and being loved is joy, happiness, satisfaction.  It's for this that we were created. . .  In the image of the Triune God - Father, Son and Holy Spirit - the Lover, the Beloved and the Love between them.  The aching hole in so many people's lives results from the absence of genuine love.If we're happy, we know we're healthy in love.  This is why some kinds of depression are so helpful for us: we get a clear sense that something in our life of love is not quite right and we need to attend to our love-life - loving and being loved.  Why?  Because the effect of love is joy and it's for joy that we were created.  When we love another, or experience genuine love, the result is happiness, or joy, or satisfaction.  Hence when the good news of the love of God in Christ touches people's lives - be they recorded in the bible, or even today - the result is joy!  And it's our joy, specifically in him, that shows the world what God is like.  If we're not experiencing joy, something is not right. For most of us, the joy of becoming a Christian fades; it becomes something we then need to work at.  Perhaps it's a little like a marriage, generally a joy on the day but we realise quite quickly that it takes work to maintain and deepen the joy.  If we check out and stop working on the relationship, then it ceases to be joyous and that's because we've ceased to love and be loved.It's not just joy in relationships - with Christ and others - we need to work at but also in all those gifts God has given us that we might experience joy in him.  For example, exercise (or heart-raising physical labour) is necessary to stimulate the endorphins that make us feel happy.  There is also a joy that comes from a good solid hard day’s work and then enjoying the fruit of our labour or successes.  This is why entitlement doesn't result in happiness and why spoilt children aren't happy kids.  Rest or recreation requires effort and discipline in order to restore our joy.Here are the five areas of life we need to make sure we are working hard in, from most important to least, and, in working hard in them, ought to experience love and joy:

• Our relationship with God. (Everything below is a gift from him and needs to be received from him.)
• Our relationship with family, church and friends.
• Our physical bodies: health, exercise, rest and recreation.
• Our minds. We feel happy learning new things but waste our minds watching or reading some things.
• Our jobs/work.

In love,Nicholas(A musing from Rev. Nicholas Lockwood, Priest in Charge, Parish of Willettonwith thanks as they remember us.)