Remember Your Joy

Do you remember the wonder and delight of being a child? Remember losing yourself in the embrace of a furry friend, wrestling a puppy, or stroking the fur of a purring kitty? Remember marveling at grown-ups’ stories of epic adventures, hoping you’d grow up to experience the same? Remember your childlike adoration of Jesus, caught up in the wonder of his love for the whole world?  

Maybe you think back with fondness on the chocolate chip cookies your grandmother baked, the bike rides with your friends, or the sticky juice dripping down your chin at the annual watermelon eating competition. Maybe you recall marveling at puffy clouds floating outside the school window, imagining their shapes and what adventures they were drifting off to.

For some of us, that childlike delight stretches into our adolescence and early adulthood. Perhaps our sense of wonder and joy leads into a naturally optimistic and joyful worldview. 

Most of us, though, end up losing our joy somewhere along the way. It can happen suddenly (through a traumatic event) or gradually, as it wears out with age and the continual onslaught of global news, local community tension, and family fights. 

However long it’s been, you’ve probably realized that delightful joy is hard to maintain on a daily basis because suffering is a part of living in this fallen world. Sometimes our own decisions create circumstances that steal our joy. Sometimes, other people’s choices and actions hurt us. And ultimately, the Bible tells us that Satan is a thief who “comes only to steal and kill and destroy” (John 10:10). But the end of that same verse also brings hope: Jesus has come “that they may have life and have it abundantly.” He alone can restore what’s been stolen and heal what’s been broken: 

The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, 
because the Lord has anointed me 
to bring good news to the poor; 
he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, 
to proclaim liberty to the captives, 
and the opening of the prison to those who are bound. (Isaiah 61:1)  

Friends, Jesus is moving to undo the damage of sin in this world. Jesus wants to restore our joy!

Joy and delight are at the heart of God’s good plan for his people. From his first pronouncement of “very good” at creation to his promise of coming to dwell with us again in the new creation, the thrust of the gospel is God’s invitation to a relationship of mutual delight.[1]  

Every beautiful gift that brings a smile to your face holds within it a kernel of God’s affection for you. Every baby’s laugh, every painted sunset, and every comfortable hug expresses your heavenly Father’s pleasure in you. For every good and perfect gift comes from God above.[2]  

And because God already delights in his children, we can learn to delight again—to recapture the childlike wonder of a life lived with him. 

Last fall I started praying, “Lord, teach me to delight in my children.” I didn’t expect him to answer the way he did: not just learning to delight in my children but learning how much our Heavenly Father delights in us, and through them, learning to delight in this beautiful world our Creator made for us. It’s been a beautiful and unexpected journey.

These days, I’m learning to savor the adventures, the hand-holding, and the bedtime snuggles—to breathe it all in before it becomes past tense.

These days, I’m slowing down time by being fully present, by looking my children in the eye, by watching the sun rise or the rain fall or the bird fly.

These days, I’m missing out on tags in Instagram stories so that I can play tag with my kids and listen to their make-believe stories.

These days, I’m rediscovering the childlike rhythms of wonder and play and faith and naps and ice cream before dinner. I’m rediscovering the joy of climbing boulders and building sandcastles and balancing on the fallen log rather than speed walking on the concrete sidewalk.

In other words, I’m learning that, to delight in my children, I need to slow down—to bend low, to enter their world and see the universe through their wonder-filled eyes. And as I borrow their childlike gaze, I marvel at our playful God who imagined such a marvelous world of beauty and majesty.

No wonder Jesus said that we need to become like little children if we want to enter the kingdom of heaven.[3] The kingdom seems so near to them that they feel they can almost touch it. It is us—all grown up and serious and rushed—who have sometimes lost our way. But in his grace, the Good Shepherd can guide us back to childlike faith by allowing our little children to show us the way . . . to wonder, to adventure, and to joy.

[1] See, for example: Psalm 16:11; Psalm 18:19; Psalm 43:4; Psalm 149:4; Zephaniah 3:17; John 15:11; Philippians 4:4

[2] James 1:17

[3] Matthew 18:3