
HEARTS
When Jesus speaks to the disciples and tells them that their ‘ hearts will be full of joy’, I wonder how they understood it. John sets this lengthy discourse around the table of their last meal together. They have already shared together the ‘bread of affliction’ and Jesus now asks them to imagine a time when their hearts will be full of joy. I imagine the disciples in a haze that night.
Often when people warn us that something it going to be really hard it can be difficult for us hear them. I have certainly imagined certain situations to be much worse than they actually were. It’s a lot more subtle when people talk to us about our hearts being filled with joy. Real joy is something very personal. Though I have chosen a picture today of a girl jumping, my own experience of joy is much quieter. It has something to do with integration, with all the parts of my life fitting together. It’s not the absence of suffering. It’s more a feeling that joy and suffering can stand side by side.
If Christ is our pattern for life, love and glory, then joy and sorrow will always be woven through this.
How do you hear Christ’s promise?
( John 16:2-23, Friday, Sixth Week of Eastertide)