When I was very small, I attended a Christian school. I’ll be honest; I don’t remember a lot of the day to day from school, but I suspect some of that is the nature of being a five year old in first grade… and looking back at it now, separated by a quarter of a century. I can sort of remember the books we used, I remember a party thing we had, where the whole school made a giant cross out of blocks of half-gallons of ice-cream peeled open. I remember the principal, who was a tall man anyway, and seemed a giant to short little me. I remember one of our teacher’s aides… she was a friend of my parents, and she had beautiful red hair, lived with her friend, and had a gorgeous crocheted rag-rug. Kendra loved me; I knew that.
But the other thing I took away from my days as a small child in a Christian school was this very small word encompassing a very large idea: J.O.Y. -Jesus, Others, You. The idea was that we were to always structure our lives in that order: put Jesus first, then others, and finally ourselves. That was the order of our priorities. It’s a Biblical idea: When Jesus was asked which commandment was the most important, He replied this way: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
He said “Love God with everything you have before you do anything else. With every ounce of who you are, Love God. Love me. Then, with what you have left over, love others the way you’d love yourself… with all the care and consideration you’d give to yourself. Every other law you’ve ever been given, every other writing you’ve ever had, every bit of instruction you’ve ever had… it all centers on these two. If you get these right, you’ve got it all.”
This little word with the great big idea was running contrary to everything the culture around me was teaching at the time; I was in first grade in 1983 and 1984, in the heart of the me-generation. Culture at the time was very selfish, very much focused on doing what felt good, what was good for me, even at the expense of others. But in a tiny little town in the mountains of Pennsylvania, a Christian school dared do something counter-culture, and I’m living the results of it 25 years later.
You see, that attitude never went away. That idea of living my life for Jesus first, for others next, and myself last soaked into me. I never look at the word “joy” without seeing “J.O.Y.” And while it’s taken some tweaking over the years (for instance, when Beth Moore pointed out in one of her Bible studies that constantly thinking less of yourself is still constantly thinking of yourself, it required me to radically reconsider how I think of myself at all!), the heart of it has traveled, intact, from that classroom, to appear in this musing, inspired by “How He Loves Us”.
I’ve been thinking about this song a lot; we sing it frequently in church. I love the imagery in it; God as a hurricane, we as a tree, God’s grace as an ocean into which we sink. But there is this beautiful idea in this song that I’m struck with that plays into the whole idea of J.O.Y. as I write this morning. “When all of a sudden, I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,” and “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets, When I think about, the way that He loves us!”
Do you see it? Let me point it out. “I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory.” God’s glory is so bright that it eclipses, blocks out, our afflictions. Like a horse wearing blinders, or a bright light focusing our attention on one thing, God’s glory should draw all of our attention, all of our focus, all of our priorities to Himself. “I don’t have time to maintain these regrets when I think about the way that He loves us.” God’s love is so pervasive, so all-consuming, that we are left with nothing left to spend on ourselves. It gets back to the first commandment: “Spend all of yourself loving me.”
If we have our priorities right, in J.O.Y. order, so that we’re thinking of God first (that’s the J, for Jesus), and meditating on His love, His grace, His mercy, and what He wants from our lives and for our lives, then where do we have time to spend thinking about our own problems? Where do we have time to think about all the things we could have done, should have done, would have done, could have said, shouldn’t have said… all the regrets of our lives… where do we have time for regrets if we put our lives in the proper perspective?
John’s been having a discussion about “true self-awareness” with a friend online. What he’s struggling to make understood with his friend is that he’s not at all focused on himself. John focuses his attentions on meeting the needs of others first, with the trust that God will provide others who will do the same, putting others before themselves to meet our needs. In many respects, that happens in our marriage; John puts my needs before his, and thus gets up and goes to work, making being awake in the mornings a habit he’s cultivated despite our mutual dislike of mornings. I’ve learned to handle raw chicken so I can make dinner for John (I never minded making dinner; I objected to touching raw chicken) and learned to make new things he’d like. These are just some of the ways that we show thought for “others” over thoughts for “ourselves”.
It’s a little word. It’s a big idea. It’s world changing. But the good news is that it happens in little ways. Think of the little ways you can practice J.O.Y. in your life today. Because when you have the right perspective of how God loves us, well… it really does eclipse everything else. Everything else is secondary to the ocean of God’s grace, to the hurricane of God’s love and mercy.
Leave me a comment with the ways you practice J.O.Y.
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Hey, have you seen this news article?
New details about Michael Jackson’s Death Emerge
I was wondering if you were going to blog about this…
I blog about music, and how that music, whether originally secular in nature or not, draws me into a deeper relationship with my maker and the lover of my soul.
I am not a gossip rag or a tabloid blog. The man is dead, and whatever the circumstances of his life or death, his CHILDREN deserve the time to grieve without ever detail of his life and death dragged under every microscope to be examined.
Out of respect for the poor children who’ve had to live with the circus of celebrity, this is the ONLY comment you will get about the death of Michael Jackson.