These people may contain Joy

Hope Nottingham's Development Co-ordinator, Beth Buckley, reflects on noticing and

declaring joy.

Every so often I get hyper fixated on an album or particular song and will listen to it on repeat for a few weeks.  Just before Holy week as I was thinking and praying about what I wanted to speak about on Easter Sunday at my Church, Raye released her album titled ‘This music may contain Hope’- it was exactly what I needed to hear, completely inspired what I was going to preach about and is all that I’ve listened to since.   

The album is split into four seasons, it outlines heartbreak, pain, and the desperate need to believe that everything is going to be alright. It finishes in ‘summer’ with two songs called ‘Joy’ and ‘Happier times ahead’ where she declares joy over her life, and invites you to listen again if you haven’t found any yet.  She repeats the refrain of ‘there may be pain in the night but joy comes in the morning’ from the Psalms, a bible verse I have always loved through all the seasons of my life.  

I think what I love about it so much, bar the London symphony orchestra and Hans Zimmer collaborating on it, is that it holds this tension of darkness and joy and the often not very straight forward journey towards joy we take through the seasons of our own lives, so beautifully. That we often do not just stumble upon joy but choose to notice the moments of it and declare it over our lives and the lives of the people we meet.  

Often, I find that God puts something on my heart to share, and then I really end up having to live it myself almost immediately with honesty and integrity. The week following Easter involved some pretty unexpected moments that very much could have thrown off and dictated my whole week. Add to that an inescapable news cycle and the feeling of an ever more unstable world and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed.  

And yet, in the midst there were some really beautiful moments of joy: an incredible spread of daffodils and bluebells spanning for as far as the eye could see on Monday, sitting in the sunshine with much loved friends, getting the privilege of holding a friend's 3 day old baby girl, watching my eldest and her friends support and encourage each other without a second of hesitation as they practiced riding their bikes, and of course a lot of very good chocolate!

When the world around us feels full of darkness, uncertainty and distress, on a huge global and political level or more personally, where are we choosing to declare and decree joy? That may be the joy found in our faith, it may be the joy in the world around us, in those we love, in good music, in a simple cup of tea and a good book.  It doesn’t erase the fear, or the hard bits, and it can be so easy for them to be eclipsed, but it can make a huge difference. 

On Easter Sunday I titled my talk ‘These people may contain Joy’ and I love the idea of that being a warning label for Christians, and for us at Hope. Not because we ignore the hard things, but because me commit to noticing joy, and letting ourselves feel a joy that can then be shared with others, whatever season they are in.  A joy, or even a hope that joy will come, that can be held in tension with the hardest of things. A joy that refuses to stay anchored in fear, anger, grief or the winters of our lives, but chooses, with help and support, to move.  

So let us notice the small moments of joy and declare them over our lives- because added up they aren’t small at all.  They remind us that there indeed will be happier times ahead and that, even if only for a moment, everything is going to be alright.