Scheduled Joy

Some people aren’t schedulers; try planning something with them. Other people aren’t joiners, try planning something with them. Then there are some schedulers who force others to be joiners, and these are just some of the reasons we need the fruit of the Spirit.

So, should you have joy on schedule? Should you have joy because someone else put it on your calendar? Is that even possible?

Well, yes. Spontaneous and individual joy isn’t the only, let alone the greatest, good.

By God’s mercy He gives us a head’s up. We have time to prepare. We know what’s coming.

By God’s mercy He gives us helps. We don’t have to rejoice raw, so to speak. We have truth and stories to remember, we have songs that involve and delight, we have one another to look at, gifts to purchase and wrap.

By God’s mercy He gives us His own Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love and joy and peace and more (Galatians 5:22).

By God’s mercy not every day is a holiday, and not every moment is a mountain top. We fast and feast, they inform/color one another. There is a time to be loud and a time to be quiet, “a time to week, and a time to laugh” (Ecclesiastes 3:4).

And, week by week in our worship, by God’s mercy He gives us bread and wine. Jesus said, “my Father gives…true bread from heaven” (John 6:32). He gives “wine to gladden the heart of man” (Psalm 104:15). He gave His own Son so that all of us who are believing in Jesus should not perish but have eternal life.