The Well is Always Here

One Thousand Gifts.....if you haven't read this book (by Ann Voskamp), I highly recommend it (Thanks Whitney!). It is so appropriate to read this time of year as we have been celebrating Thanksgiving, and I sometimes still struggle to focus of what I have instead of what I do not have. 

The holidays are a hard time for a lot of people, many are alone or facing some sort of family, financial, or health difficulty.  And for some reason these things can all seem a little worse around the holidays.  I know that's true for me.  I have always loved the holidays, but the last couple of years they have brought with them this undeniable sadness. They have made me miss having children in a very deep way.  Even though we now know who our children are, they still aren't here. Yes, it is our last holiday season without children, but we miss them. And this holiday season, I am once again having to choose joy and choose to go to the well.

This morning, my heart was stirred by this passage from the book I was just telling you about:

"Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water" (Genesis 21:19 NIV).

"Hagar and her boy were dying of thirst with a well less than a bowshot away. 

In this wilderness, I keep circling back to this: I'm blind to joy's well every time I really don't want it. The well is always there.  And I choose not to see it.  Don't I really want joy?  Don't I really want the fullest life?  For all my yearning for joy, longing for joy, begging for joy--is the bald truth that I prefer the empty dark? Prefer drama? Why do I lunge for control instead of joy?  Is it somehow more perversely satisfying to flex control's muscle? Ah--power--like Satan.  Do I think Jesus' grace too impotent to give me the full life?  Isn't that the only reason I don't always swill the joy?  If the startling truth is that I don't really want joy, there's a far worse truth.  If I am rejecting the joy that is hidden somewhere deep in this moment--am I not ultimately rejecting God?  Whenever I am blind to joy's well, isn't it because I don't believe in God's care?  That God cares enough about me to always offer me joy's water, wherever I am, regardless of circumstance.  But if I don't believe God cares, if I don't want or seek the joy He definitely offers somewhere in this moment--I don't want God.
Blasphemer.

In His presence is fullness of joy.  He is in this moment.  The well is always here.  God is always here--precisely because He does care.

You have to want to see the well before you can drink from it.  You have to want to see joy, God in the moment."

This holiday season, I want to see joy, God in the moment. Do you?  Easier said than done, but we must choose to go to the well and drink of joy's water.