“Seems that joy is in the offering… Hallelujah”
If you know me you know that planning is not my forte. I’ve always been a “wing it” kinda guy, but I do try. I try to think ahead and plan for what is coming up. I try to organize my thoughts and goals and schedule things, and I do have some success, but I would not call myself a “planner.” Throw me in the middle of a situation and I can quickly determine what to do. Throw the unexpected at me and I will shine. Improvisation is not just a musical term for me, it’s a way of life!
Improvisation is not just a musical term for me, it’s a way of life!
Don’t ask me what I plan to do next month… or next week… or tomorrow, because in my head, I haven’t gotten there yet. I’m not bragging. Many would consider this a weakness, a character flaw and maybe, in its extreme, it is. That said – I do try. I set goals. I organize small achievable steps to be executed over a set time frame. I track progress and occasionally, I hit walls.
I don’t mean I physically hit a wall, though sometimes I imagine that would be cathartic. I mean my plan doesn’t work. Everything goes off the rails. Tragedy strikes or I get blindsided by life. More often than not, it seems my plans, my ideas, my expectations get turned upside down.
I could get angry and throw a fit. I could punch a wall. I could cry and scream and it’s entirely possible (read “likely”) that I have done all of those in the past. Or I can shake it off, laugh at myself, give it to God and try again.
Give it to God sounds very “spiritual.” It’s a very “Christian” thing to say, but here’s my reality. I have reached a point in my life where God, talking to God, singing to God, spending time God, is very much a part of my daily life. It’s second nature. I talk to Him as if He is right next to me, because well… He is. So when I get hit with something unexpected, one of my first reactions is to talk to Him.
I am not Uber-spiritual. Sometimes I react with anger or fear. Sometimes I panic. Sometimes I want to run away because I am human, because I am weak, because I am not perfect. It’s my secondary response to worship or pray but that seems to shift something in me and something unexplainable happens when I shift my thoughts from my failure to His faithfulness… Joy.
Joy isn’t the result of all my plans going well, but rather, it seems to result from trusting and depending on God, even in the middle of everything going wrong. When I worship in the middle of the battle, or in the storm, or in the prison, I find it.
It “seems that Joy is in the offering hallelujah”