Thread by @RobbersonJon

It is important that we just stop from time to time.

Gather our thoughts.

Reflect on the goodness that indwells our day to day lives. We do not know how greatly God protects us. We do not know that an untied shoelace or someone not letting you merge saved your life by a second

We are more often than not exempted from the knowledge of how everything interconnects. A second cup of coffee could result in you meeting your future wife. A stranger shaking another stranger’s hand can pass an illness that results in your finding a new job.

We know that synchronicity exists. We use terms like fate and coincidence. Or we say “a funny thing happened” and that preamble alone generally informs the listener that “one of those things” is about to be discussed.

But do we really understand any of it?

Is our world so corrupted by little blue light screens and all the brilliant spangle that emanates from them, that we are walking around, all of us on the same map; yet somehow further from each other than two intrepid souls on opposite sides of a mountain?

Have we forgotten that we all exist woven into the same piece of whole cloth?

Do you believe this?

Why do things happen the way they do but even more pressing: why do we all possess this nagging sense that we’re missing something?

Let’s have an hones moment here. I know I do.

Look around. No doubt you know many different types of people? Some have a nicer home or better education. Some are down to their last hundred bucks while another made a fortune in Bitcoin or real estate.

Some bitch incessantly about life while others wish they had more time.

Jesus told us to care for widows and orphans.

He told us to visit the sick and the prisoners.

He told us “the way you treat these people, the way that you treat the least among you; that is precisely how you are treating me.”

Are you following this? Am I?

Have we built little mental and by consequence spiritual jails that we think protect us but,in fact, prevent others from entering?

What if these infernal i-this and i-phone that, i-pad this and me, me, me-what if it’s not only the wrong direction; what if it is killing us?

One night in 2015, after several tequilas and some old Dan Fogelberg tunes a friend of mine lit a smoke and told me something that cut through all the BS and like a fine scalpel, still exacts for me its due today.

If I told you his name many of you would recognize it.

He looked at me with such clarity of purpose his eyes punched through the exhaled Salem smoke:

“Jon,” he took another drag and looked up. Rain clouds were passing across an otherwise dark night sky. It was still eighty degrees with showers. “Jon do you know the feeling of joy?”

I nicked one of his menthol coffin nails, lit it and dragged deeply. He continued:

“Because dude I have pretty much everything. I have a business. A beautiful wife. A great kid. All of this-“ he waved his arms around. My eyes were fixated on the cherry end of his cigarette.

“But I have almost zero joy.”

I stood across from him and held my normally squirmy self together for a minute and then a polite minute more.

“Oh man. Be right back”

I returned a second layer with the jug of tequila,noted the two shot glasses on the table then upended the jug

I poured us each another shot and relished the warm electricity sizzle down my spine as the glubble of booze did its thing.

“Me neither” I finally replied. “I don’t know shit about actual, like, pure joy”

We both smoked and thought and wondered who would venture next.

“But dude, we’re supposed to. It’s all over the Bible” he stated.

“I know,man. I know.”

We spoke for a few minutes about private matters or moments in our respective lives that could qualify as joy. Not happiness. Which seems to have a very fleeting, temporary quality. But joy.

Since that otherwise random night in Texas, almost six years ago, without necessarily meaning to, I often qualify others with that simple criteria. Maybe paradigm is a better word? Because the qualification does not come from a spirit of judgement.

Does this person know joy?

Do I? Have I made any progress whatsoever in the ‘joy department’ since getting caught one quarter drunk and flat footed by my friend’s remarks a half decade ago?

Hard to say. But I suspect it should not be ‘hard to say’unless there is a deficiency?Right?

Do any of us have joy?

The closest thing to joy that I experience comes from playing with animals or penning something that I know, like I know, is going to hit you, the reader, with the precise emotional profundity that justifies why it was written.

But what does “the joy of the Lord is my strength”

really even mean?

I honestly have no clue. And whereas maybe I’m out on a limb with this one, and maybe like many threads two thirds of the people who read the first two or three tweets have already bailed but I am betting many of you completely understand what I am saying?

How many conservative Christians and even more particularly, conservative Christian, preparedness minded folks ever experience any joy?

Is joy an arcane Biblical concept? An emotion that has seen better days? Is joy something like ballyhoo? A word that exists in the dictionary?

Or is joy something quieter? Steadier? Not even necessarily akin to happiness or elation or excitement?

Is joy knowing you have accepted the free gift of eternal salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ and thus really, at the bottom line, have nothing to worry about?

Is joy that satisfied feeling of meeting your financial obligations and having a few bucks left over?

Because as I am sure many of you have read at some point in your life: if you have a change jar or piggy bank with five extra bucks in it you are in the richest 10% on earth

True story.

Or is joy having that special someone? That bond of true partnership. Is that joy? You know, that sense of running errands or dealing with some hopelessly rude, but random individual yet knowing all the while that you have someone to eat dinner alongside later?

That is a great feeling but do we qualify that sense of connection, of commitment and the true selflessness that is the line of demarcation between love and like, is that joy?

Maybe. I will be interested to see how people reply to this thread. In fact as this was not planned

and I am writing off the cuff and as fast as my thumb typing allows, I will be surprised if anyone reads this at all!

Because for being such a silly little three letter word, for being a word that even young children understand, the concept of joy makes people uneasy.

Through my travels I have observed that women tend to respond by offering examples of circumstantial joyfulness. Childbirth and ensuing motherhood is probably the example most often sited. Men react differently but many fall back on birth of a child too.

Rarely does a day pass that I am not impressed with the discourse that we enjoy with each other on this strangely powerful mega-group-text thing that we all seem to like so much.

So what do you guys (and girls) think about joy?

What is it? And when have you had it?

As we all grind our teeth and/or suffer the mercurial rubber band formerly known as our emotions; as we close in on this nation-defining election, does anyone have any joy?

Or how about an abundance of joy?

Because if you have it I want to hear about it.

Is it a fair generalization to say that smarter, more thoughtful, better read and broader knowledgeable people have a hard time feeling joy?

Do we just know too much for our own good?

Kinda tough to turn cartwheels when we KNOW some of the things,

things so heinous, the awareness of which, alone, serve to bind us.

Let’s be blunt: some very wicked stuff has been going on and for far too long.

Praying is important and will serve as the foundation upon which the rest of our efforts must be built.

But praying alone will not suffice. If all it took was prayer and God did not expect action from His children, the Bible would be s significantly shorter book.

We are facing a period in our mutual lives where action must be taken and those actions may be not only more difficult

various necessary actions may be viewed by some as exaggerated, over the top, reactionary or even criminal.

But evil force must be met and mitigated with equal and opposite forces of good if we are to make any real attempt to rebalance the scales of sin and reprobate behavior

that are askew between the United States of America and the Lord Jehovah, Lord of Hosts.

Maybe the joy-deficiency in America is directly related to our unsustainable sin complexion before heavens court?

It makes sense. Murder, lies and thievery (to name a few) cannot ever

produce goodness or a positive result.

And my fellow Americans we have those three huge sins on our hands and up to our elbows and even beyond, along with dozens, if not hundreds of others.

Failure to re-elect Donald Trump would effectively mean we lose our voice. And our last

chance to correct a nation that was once a beacon of greatness.

America, from Liberty’s torch to the Golden Gate, was the most brilliant ray of new hope across the old world because our light shone brightly composed of millions of lumens of the goodness within our hearts.

But with each heart that became selfish that light dimmed. With each aborted baby. With each missile fired at countries with whom we did not even proffer declaration of war. With each divorce and each shady business deal that once magnificent beam darkens.

Our joy with it.

We must persevere.

We must approach each day with renewed vigor and stop taking for granted that because we are only however many years old, because we are Americans, because we have 800 credit, because we own guns, that we are somehow exempt from the uncertainty of life.

Not a single person reading this has any guarantee of tomorrow. And yet we must pull together and do our level best to drastically and quickly change the future as it is currently written for our children and our children’s children.

Perhaps bequeathing a renewed lamp, a new illumination of the light that Jesus called us to be, will bring with it that joy that so many of us are aware is possible but like a bulb switched off, has been usurped in recent generations by shadows and the fear that darkness brings?

My prayer for each of you,my prayer for this land, my family, President Trump and my own heart is that like 2 Chronicles 7:14 instructs:we will repent and turn from our wicked ways. God promises He will hear from heaven and heal our land

And I bet along with healing He sends joy