“They're here, and they sure are hungry!” Linda said, as I arrived home for supper.
“Who's they?” I said suspiciously, casting a protective eye towards the supper table.
“The yellow-heads,” Linda replied.
“I don't like 'em nor the horse they rode in on,” I whispered. “Did we invite them?” I was racking my aging memory, desperately trying to remember who the heck the Yellowheads were and why they had turned up at our place precisely at suppertime.
“No you inhospitable oaf, the yellow-headed blackbirds. They showed up right on schedule, just like they have for years. They moved in on our two bird feeders this morning and cleaned them out in minutes.”
“Oh, those guys,” I said, greatly relieved. “That's cool. I guess that means spring is here for sure.”
We sat down for supper. After the table was cleared, Linda filled both bird feeders for the morning onslaught. Shortly after dawn the next morning, I heard the unmistakeable rusty-hinge voices of yellow-headed blackbirds. When I eventually barefooted it into the kitchen to get our morning coffee, I paused before the window to watch two of them gorging themselves. They looked like a couple of feathered swine at a seed trough.
After breakfast and pictures, I sat in an ancient pressed-back rocker in the living room watching the 'Yellowheads' and reflecting on the cycles of nature. We live on the edge of Lac la Hache, at the northern marshy end. We share it with a plethora of fur, fish and fowl that make their living here. A series of three large picture windows span the side of our house on the lakeside. Our lives largely consist of gazing out these windows, watching our wild neighbours and the cycles of nature. The seasons come, the seasons go, and as the seasons cycle so does the wildlife. In the last week of March, just as the ice loosens its steely grip on the lakeshore, the yellow-heads always show up. Over the years, we've slowly learned you can bank on nature's cycles.
Lately I have been learning that not only can you bank on nature's cycles but you can bank on the Spirit's cycles too. Spiritually, certain things follow certain things. Like lately, I've been learning about joy.
I don't know about you, but it has always given me the shivering two-step when I read in my Bible the command to, “Rejoice always.”(1Thess. 5:16) On one hand it sounds like, “Do what ever you have to, to make yourself feel joyful,” which seems to me to be more than two steps beyond self-serving. On the other hand, it sounds like, “Pull yourself up by the bootstraps fella and generate some joy,” which when I am feeling depressed is two steps beyond impossible. And yet, over and over again in the Bible, especially in my two favourite places, Paul's Epistles and the Psalms, I read, 'rejoice always.' In one place, Paul has the audacity to follow his seeming command to “rejoice always” with the statement, “this is God's will for you.” Ya, right! If I dwell on it too much, it kind of leaves me sitting in a corner, examining my own nasal contents. The song, “Don't Worry, Be Happy” has a similar effect on me.
This can't be what Paul nor the Psalms has in mind. If I look closely at one of the places where Paul is commanding rejoicing always, lo and behold it is embedded in a spiritual cycle. The cycle includes, “pray continuously and give thanks in all things.” (1 Thess. 5:17, 18). This spiritual cycle is perhaps best described as the cycle of grace and gratitude. Because God is a God of grace, my faith in Him moves me to always pray. This just naturally seems to cycle to giving thanks. John Calvin put it “The reason why Paul enjoins, 'Pray without ceasing; in every thing give thanks,' is, because he would have us with the utmost assiduity, at all times, in every place, in all things, and under all circumstances, direct our prayers to God, to expect all the things which we desire from him, and when obtained ascribe them to him; thus furnishing perpetual grounds for prayer and praise.”
Hmmm — a perpetual cycle of prayer and thanksgiving, of grace and gratitude. “Grace and gratitude belong together like heaven and earth … grace calls forth gratitude like voice does an echo … gratitude follows grace like thunder follows lightning.” I think Karl Barth said that. “Grace brings on gratitude like March does yellow-headed blackbirds.” I said that. But how does joy fit in?
Ben Patterson suggests in his book Deepening Your Conversation with God that joy is the subjective experience of gratitude and grace! I like that. It suggests that joy is part of the grace and gratitude cycle. It suggests that joy spiritually follows God's grace, my continuous prayers and expressing thanks in all things. It suggests that I don't have to manufacture joy but that it shows up as the fruit of the Spirit as I participate in God's grace and gratitude sequence of things. It suggests Joy is embedded as part of a wondrous spiritual cycle. When I take this hypothesis to the laboratory of my faith, it is powerfully proven true, even in the midst of my own human suffering. And it dawns on me what another human sufferer means when he writes, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18)
