December 18 – JOY – Psalm 106

Your Word is joy to our hearts, O, Creator of the Dance. May we become bearers of joy, We who are invited to share in The Cosmic Dance! 

Psalm 106:19-20 -Psalms for Praying by Nan C. Merrill

The day after I received the invitation to write something on JOY, the assigned psalm included the above. I took it as a (holy!) hint, a gift that I was to unwrap and explore. My thoughts roamed as I reflected on the words through the lens of Advent……Yes, the Word became flesh and lived among us – coming as a babe in a manger in a stable.

The Dance of creation with all its components to which we relate and belong. (Let yourself feel the movement of the waves on the sea, breeze in the trees, the feel of making angels in fresh snow, the awesome fullness of the night sky……)

Joy is defined as a vivid emotion of pleasure, extreme gladness; and each of us is invited to be a bearer, to carry it wherever we go. It can be a heavy load at times depending on what else we have to bear, but still we are invited to be part of something bigger……

The Cosmic Dance – the universe is a well ordered whole, immeasurably vast, some pieces of which collide and break open into other forms but there is beauty in the broken, like ragged pieces of stained glass brought together by a skilled artisan….

How many hymns do we know that have the word JOY in them? (Let them float through your mind's ear and give them a hum or two… )

– Mary L. (Bunny) Stewart