On Joy

“Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Psalm 30 : 5

A Prayer for This Morning

Father, in the long nights you keep count of what I weep over, and you have promised the morning. Teach me to treat sorrow as a lodger and not an owner. Wake me to joy, and let me wear it plainly enough that someone else takes heart.

Affirmation

Whatever this night holds, I belong to the morning.

The Reflection

The psalm gives weeping a curious status: it may endure for the night, like a traveller who must be housed until dawn but has no claim on the property. Grief, in this picture, is real and is honoured; it is simply not permanent. It lodges. It does not own.

Joy cometh in the morning is not a promise that mornings are easy, but that they are appointed. Light returns on schedule and is not consulted about our readiness. The discipline of joy is mostly the discipline of expecting it: setting the table, so to speak, for a guest whose arrival has never yet failed.

In Her Company

St Teresa of the Andes

A Chilean Carmelite who lived only nineteen years and filled them to the brim, writing to her friends that God is infinite joy.

Juana Fernández Solar, Saint Teresa of the Andes, was born in Santiago de Chile in 1900. She entered the Carmel of Los Andes at nineteen and died of typhus within the year, leaving letters of remarkable spiritual joy. Canonised in 1993, she is Chile's first saint.

Image via Wikimedia Commons

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The Strand

Pearls of other mornings

Each day the brand draws one pearl from a strand of twenty-one. Here is the whole strand, for the mornings you missed and the ones you wish to keep.

On Worth
Matthew 13 : 45-46
On Light
Isaiah 60 : 1
On Rest
Matthew 11 : 28
On Courage
Joshua 1 : 9
On Kindness
Proverbs 31 : 26
On Trust
Proverbs 3 : 5-6
On Joy
Psalm 30 : 5
On Purpose
Ephesians 2 : 10
On Peace
John 14 : 27
On Gratitude
Psalm 103 : 2
On Hope
Hebrews 6 : 19
On Gentleness
1 Peter 3 : 4
On Provision
Matthew 6 : 28-29
On Community
Ecclesiastes 4 : 9-10
On Wisdom
Proverbs 3 : 15
On Renewal
Lamentations 3 : 22-23
On Service
Colossians 3 : 23
On Patience
James 5 : 7
On Forgiveness
Ephesians 4 : 32
On Beauty
Ecclesiastes 3 : 11
On Love
Jeremiah 31 : 3

St Teresa of the Andes

A Chilean Carmelite who lived only nineteen years and filled them to the brim, writing to her friends that God is infinite joy.

Image via Wikimedia Commons