Creation is joyful. Creation is enjoyable. Creation is fun.
Whilst all the above is true it may seem a somewhat frivolous or even facile thing to concentrate on joy when quite a few parts of the world are staggeringly broken. I think especially this week for the people of the Ukraine and what their lives are like living under the threat of constant bombing. Air raid sirens, pain, loss and much more. When I start to think of the collective trauma (a concept that will sadly be resonant with us and some of the losses we saw in Covid) they are living with, my heart can scare take it in.
I find myself thinking of the words from the prayer book , “in the midst of life we are in death.”
How can we do creation and joy in a world so full of pain and tears…?
But is it an either or? In my first parish we had a lot of funerals and the local cemetery was right next to the primary school and so very often I would be at the grave side saying sombre and weighty words and doing somber and weighty things, and it would be playtime in the school with the noise of hundreds of exuberant primary pupils playing and shouting and running and jumping and more.
If you have every been through a serious bereavement you will know the very real incomprehension at seeing ‘normal’ life going on around you. Don’t they know my world has just collapsed.. and at first that was my thought about the children – don’t they know what we are doing, how dare they.. But then something of God’s beauty and wonder broke through my own self-importance and even the importance of what we were doing as I realised in a very wonderful way that life was going on. In the midst of death, there was life….unashamed, unabashed, unfettered and enthusiastic life – none of which lessened or diminished the mourning we were doing but in a godly way enhanced it.
So often God gives us the joy of life in and amongst the trials. The trials don’t mean stop looking for joy – rather they tell us to seek it all the more. One of my favourite short essays by CS Lewis is one called “Learning in war time” where he directly challenges those who in World War Two suggested that the kind of thing he was doing (lecturing) was too frivolous an thing for war time. Lewis rejects this binary thinking and goes so far as to say if learning is ok in peace time then it is all the more important in war time- war creates no new human condition it merely magnifies what is already present
Equally and more poetically there is that lovely phrase from Kahil, Gibrain, “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.
And the self same well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.”
And in lego times as per the picture many lego mini figures now come with two expressions on the heads, one happier, one sadder or startled.
Tomorrow in church we’re going to be thinking about Creation as part of our series exploring God as creator – and we’re going to ‘enjoy’ the joy that creation can bring us when we as people made in the image of God participate in I creating things. We’re going to be blessing our brand new (but also very old) Hassock Screen display and I’m going to be sharing some of the things I have created recently. If you have made something yourself recently or even a long time ago you would like to bring and show us that would be wonderful.
Our service will be suitable for all ages and all stages of faith and I welcome you to come along. And maybe even en-joy it. At any given moment in the world there are great sadnesses and tragedies but there are also great joys and wonders, things being created and i things being made new. The sadnesses kind of looks after themselves in that they are hard to ignore – the joys, well let’s dive into those…
A reminder today at church between 10 and 2 is our occasional love your church morning when we shall have some fun cleaning and tidying – and if the weather is ok we might even be in the front doing a spot of weeding and beautifying the car park area. So if you have any helpful outdoor implements do bring them along with your packed lunch..
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