Something About The Joy

So for the second time in the last two months I have been blind-sided by the flu.   I have spent the last four days in bed, with barely enough energy to stumble across the floor.   This is not fun.   Whenever I am physically unwell, and therefore personally inconvenienced by pain, this dark, evil world appears even darker than usual. My first instinct when this happens is to go over to the dark side.   I will obstinately ignore any small glimmer of light in the darkness in order to indulge in self-pity over my own misery. I forget all the lessons I've learned in the past about the triumph of Good over Evil. The evil is all I can see in the present moment, and I take it very personally. Last night, desperate for some distraction from my enforced idleness, I languished in front of Netflix. The app opened to a movie called TheBoy Who Harnessed the Wind . * The movie is based on the non-fiction novel by William Kamkwamba, an amazing young man who rescued his village f

For the last year and a half I've been reading through The Bible one book at a time.    The Bible is a  collection of 66 individual books.   Some of the books are small, but some are quite long.   This morning I finished reading Jeremiah .   Yes, I did.   The whole thing.   And I'm proud of myself.   It's one of the long ones--52 chapters, 61 pages-- and I'm not talking about light, easy reading here.   The Book of Jeremiah is a deep, dark book. Jeremiah has been called the weeping prophet . He suffered from what I'm sure would be diagnosed today as long-term clinical depression.   And it's no wonder.   God chose him to deliver a ranting tirade to His much-loved people, the Israelites.  The tirade is full of threats of judgment because of all the evil they are engaged in, and, to make it worse, God tells Jeremiah, at the very beginning, that the people will not listen to him and that they will end up being judged.    Harshly.  As in near