As I think about my word for 2008, “eucharisteo“:
Day delivers wonders early.
Petals of ice crystals bejewel stems, beauty blooming in January freeze.
I touch, and they flake, and something moves inside of me. Is this thing, joy, so fragile too?
Some say joy is not a luxury, but a duty, an owed act. Not a frill sewed onto the Christ-life, but the required fabric.
Ice tinkles, scatters. And I think: yes, it is that. God has bestowed, given. And I owe Him delight. Wouldn’t anything else be robbery? Stealing away without so much as a word of gratitude for this show of daily wonders, this next breath, this.
I gather crystals, delicate and disappearing, and know that joy is the only reasonable response, yes, the duty of a human being who can produce nothing, but only receive. All I can give, really, is joy. It’s what I owe.
Joy is to be the very garment, the weave, of the Christ-follower.
But sitting here, if I am honest, joy feels nothing like a duty, an obligatory uniform. It surges, warm, an elixir of life.
The ice gems melt into me.
Joy is a duty… and a luxury. Not either/or, but both/and.
Joy is what I owe the God who gives endlessly, a spring that fountains over me endlessly. But these grace waters are luxury, extravagance, to a dusty, parched traveler.
My thumb palms the wet that has soaked in, drops still glistening. Isn’t this luxury?
For the word luxury stems from the Latin, luxo, to loosen. I am loosened from the dark, released, freed. This Light is luxury. Defined as “a free or extravagant indulgence in the pleasures of the table,” I could, if I chose, know quotidian luxury. For haven’t I’ve been invited to feast at His Banqueting table? I wonder, what would it be like to daily sup in the pleasures of His table?
Luxury is “anything delightful to the senses.” When I wake up to it, isn’t the whole world a luxury, delighting?
Joy is duty… and, if I’d like, my daily luxury.
I pluck the ice flower and take it home.
Drinking today:
Related reading from Mozart and Mudpies: Cheerful Souls
