Psalm 119:111 The Discipline of Joy

Your statutes are my heritage forever;
they are the joy of my heart.

Psalm 119:111

Sadness and joy often travel together on the 1 road of life.

Karen and I were sad to have to move from a home that had been such a blessing to us. Moving yet again never brings me happiness.

But what joy it is to recall that God has always had a plan every time we've moved during our 41 years of marriage. His statutes are always there, guiding our path in the direction of His next adventure for us.

We were sad beyond measure when age and health forced us to walk away from prison ministry after fifteen long years. On top of that, we were unhappy to discover that our departure from the ministry meant the end of the Christian Campus House prison ministry altogether. I still fight back tears on some Monday nights.

There is great joy in my heart, however, knowing it was never my prison ministry, just as it was never Roy Weece's ministry or CCH's. It was God's ministry. His statutes clearly recommend visiting and ministering to those in prison, and He no doubt has already sent some other group to fill that chapel every Monday evening.

Watching our close-knit small group dwindle until it ended was a sad thing. It was like losing our family when we no longer had that weekly gathering after nearly 20 years together.

But what joy there is in bonds that have not been severed by mere distance. It's a joy to live in a time when dears friends who now live in other cities and far flung countries are just a text message or e-mail away. The statutes of the Lord promise just such a fellowship of the saints. His promises to continue to bless us through his people are filling us with joy as we nurture the seedling of a new small group of tight knit brothers and sisters.

The physical anguish and primal fear brought about by my heart attack last Fall were about more than we could handle. We'll ever regain the foolish confidence of life we once took for granted.

And yet there is unutterable joy that came along with walking through the valley of the shadow of death and discovering that the disciplines of a lifetime spent allowing God to write his statutes upon my heart really did mean that I never doubted or feared what would come next if it was indeed my time to die.

Throughout my life, the times of greatest sorrow have always been accompanied by the incredible joy of claiming the inheritance of God's promises.