Snap Joy :: 1

Have you ever felt it?

The depressive dullness of one day after another? Nothing is going drastically wrong, but nothing seems to be wonderfully right either?

It's a dreariness that seems to drain the life out of you, dribble by dribble.

And it pulls you down and drags you inward, till you are convinced the sun just isn't shining anymore. Not in your world.

Oh, but it is.

And those may be real feelings, those gloomy meanderings of the mind, but they're not the whole truth.

Look up.

If you look for joy, it's there.

I've felt the discouragement, and I'm tired of it. Here's how I'm fighting back. By snapping joy.

That's all. One picture a week of something that brings me joy. I don't even have to create a moment. Just notice one. By faith, believe it is there to be captured.

How do I know it's there? Because of a promise. Two of them actually.

"In Thy presence is fullness of joy." 

(Psalm 16:11)

"Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." 

(Matthew 28:20)

As long as Jesus is with us, joy can be found.

Oh snap.

Let this thought be burned in my mind's eye. Let this thought eclipse the others and forever change the way I look at my world and the people in it.

And, as the poet Hopkins reminds us, "Christ plays in ten thousand places," so joy can be found in the most surprising of ways or ordinary of days.

Snap joy. Simple.

Here is this week's snap:


#1: "Lovely in Limbs Not His"

~~~

Here is the full poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins:

As Kingfishers Catch Fire

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame; 

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells 

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's 

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name; 

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same: 

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells; 

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells, 

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came. 

I say móre: the just man justices; 

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces; 

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is — 

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places, 

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his 

To the Father through the features of men's faces. 

~lg