During launch, my team and another team went out on a “team date” to get $1.00 tacos and ice cream. We are working with this all girls team in Romania, so we wanted to spend some time together to get to know these lovely women that we would be serving with and living with for one month.
Our launch training took place in Little Mexico in Gainesville, GA, and we decided to scope out the ice cream situation at a local supermarket before we went to dinner. As we were walking into the store, a man was outside, painting the day’s specials on the windows. We smiled at him briefly as we walked by and again as we left the store. Excited about our team date that night and just for Romania in general, you might say we were a loud group, talking and laughing our way down the street.
We went to dinner and returned to the store to pick up the ice cream we had set our sights on earlier. As we were walking back into the store, the man we had smiled at earlier said, “Ya’ll aren’t Christians, are you?” A few of us stopped and said, “Yeah, we are.”
“What? You’re kiddin’.”
“No, we really are.”
“Ya’ll can’t be Christians – ya’ll are… (at this point he made the universal sign for chatter – holding both hands up and opening and closing them like mouths) too much.”
We laughed. “So you’re saying we’re too happy to be Christians?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah – ya’ll are too happy to be Christians!”
We continued to talk to him for a bit. Turns out he had seen us around town and had a general idea of what we were preparing to do. After we had our ice cream, I saw one of our squad members exchanging contact info with him.
It interesting to me that one stereotype about Christians is that we are somber, guilt-ridden people who never have fun and never, ever laugh (unless they’re laughing at how dumb the devil is). Of course, on the other side of spectrum is the stereotype that Christians are constantly (and annoyingly) bubbly and have no concept of harsh reality.
But what if we could find the middle ground between those two stereotypes? It’s a tricky balance to master, but I think it looks something like joy.
What I’d like to propose to you is that joy is not being forever perky – I mean, we all know someone like that, right? That person who seems to have not a care in the world but DOES have a pat answer for every trial (“well, you know…God works in mysterious ways…”). Let’s be honest: that person you would just like to strangle sometimes.
I am definitely not saying that having a positive attitude is a bad thing. What I’m trying to say is that joy is different than being positive. I think joy is the assurance of knowing that we are part of a big picture. That our trials and hardships, as heartbreaking as they might be, are not the end of life as we know it. We are joyful in knowing that it really isn’t all about us. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying to trivalize the trials in our lives. They’re rough – no matter what kinds of trials they are. But having joy during those hard times is the blessed assurance that through our ups and downs, God remains the same.
His love for us always endures, His plan is always good and the pain is always temporary.
