Hymn: “O Happy Day That Fixed My Choice” – Phillip Doddridge (1702-1751)
Tune: HAPPY DAY
Let’s take on a Sacred Harp tune today, why don’t we? Get
your fasola in gear, and start singing this text and tune familiar to most
every evangelical denomination. For today, I’m using a line from the refrain… from the
part we all know by heart:
He taught me how to watch and pray,
And live rejoicing ev’ry day.
Happy day!
Happy day
When Jesus
washed my sins away!
When I’m posting a birthday greeting on Facebook, I often
simply put “Happy Day,” because the greater percentage of my Facebook friends
are also believers… and would likely get the crossover meaning of my post…
giving a nod to their second birth as well as their initial one. Okay, so nobody
gets it, but it is after all the thought that counts!
In our pilgrimage of faith, we have each learned to be alert
(to watch) and to speak with God on a
regular basis (pray). He… and many
humans along the way… have drilled those into us. However, we stumble a bit
when it comes to the live rejoicing ev’ry
day part. Not because we don’t want to, but because we just don’t do it!
The rejoicing life – the life lived in a state of joy – is one
of our goals AND one of the promises of scripture. It’s an easy face to put on,
but not a simple process to carry out.
Recently from the choir loft of my church, I looked out
over the congregation as we sang, “There are sweet expressions on each face,”
and realized we just sang a lie! Fortunately, I don’t have a mirror in my choir
folder; perhaps I should!
People outside the faith will not be attracted to
grumpy, negative, frowning, cranky people inside the faith. You may be
sharing your faith with everyone you meet, but your attitude may be decrying
every word that comes with your well-rehearsed witness.
I’m pretty convinced after sixty-plus years of observation
that our joy is our most-attractive tool for witnessing. I’ve been forced to go
through too many church-in-a-box programs from which I have emerged full of the
right Bible verses, yet possibly devoid of the joy to back them up.
In a contemporary African American spiritual, we sing, “This
joy that I have the world didn’t give it to me… and the world can’t take it
away.” In other words, we may conjure up a positive attitude and smile-crossed
face, but it is the deeper, sincere joy for which we long. That authenticated-by-the-Spirit
great delight is what we are after – and too often, it is what we will not allow
to happen. It is yet another way we have fallen short of the glory of God!
I have a few heroes for whom this is truly their operating
system – for whom the joy of the Lord is the strength of their lives. A hero is
one after whom I would like to model my own existence, and in this case, that
definition applies.
Let’s stop grinning our way through life. Let’s instead live rejoicing ev’ry day - not as a
trick we pull off to appear happy, but as an act of plumbing the depths of the
Spirit of Christ.
Wouldn’t this be a good day to start?
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