The renovations at my house are over, and now I'm putting
the rest of it back in some order. I do love my new shower. I wish I could
refurbish a few more things, but I'm not sure I'm anywhere near ready to move items
around and block off part of the house so that the boys won't wander where they
shouldn't.
I found something joyful during this process that I hadn't
experienced for quite some time. It was such an unexpected feeling that I found
myself looking forward to its repetition whenever possible. It is a simple something
that I can enjoy from the comfort of my rocking chair and not have to go
wandering about to find it. Of course, it doesn't last long, but even a few
minutes of what I've begun calling my "Jolt of joy" is enough to
lighten my mood and lift my heart.
I have some prisms in my living room window on the northwest
side. The tree outside is quite a bit thinner of branches this year, so I get
more direct afternoon sun. Now and then, in the late afternoon, the sun hits a
prism, and I find a spot of a rainbow on the ceiling. Soon there are more dots
of prismatic color, and my heart soars. It's simple to sit there and look at
them without thinking of anything but instead just letting my mind open up to
the beauty I see. It becomes a time of contemplation which I'm beginning to
count on as a God-given period just to be, see, and enjoy.
Prisms are pieces of glass that take the light and break
it into seven distinct colors that make up a rainbow. Every child in school learns
at some time or other to use the mnemonic of ROY G BIV to remind them of the
red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet we see as the light passes
through angles and planes of glass. Noah built an ark in the First Covenant,
gathered up his family and representatives of all the animals, and put them inside
the ark as God commanded. Then God sent enough rain to flood the entire earth,
drowning the land, animals, birds, and even all the people except those in the
vessel. When the land emerged from the receding waters, God put a rainbow in
the sky as a visual sign of God's promise never to destroy the whole earth by
flood again. I know I don't always think of Noah when I see a rainbow,
especially a double one, but I can't seem to get enough of the colors while I
can see them.
Rainbows remind me of natural stained-glass windows. In
churches, public buildings, galleries, sometimes private homes, stained glass
represents pictures, designs, and stories told in bits of colored glass used to
teach and remind even the illiterate of things and people to be remembered when
seen. I loved going to the National Cathedral to see the magnificent stained
glass. One of my favorites is the Space Window, a blue-shaded glass representing
the vastness of space, then a sphere that signifies the moon itself. In a
clear-glass bubble is a dark shape that is an actual rock from the moon's
surface. Other windows in other churches I have visited have been as complex
and colorful as those at the Cathedral in D.C. or simple blocks and lines of
color with no particular outline or shape. For me, it is all about the color.
It isn't all about rainbows and colors, though. I look
out my window from my computer desk toward several trees across the street with
their layers of green due to the natural colors of the leaves and the shades
and hues the light of the sun gives them. I remember the vivid blue of the
South China Sea and the dancing diamonds of the wavelets as they sparkled in
the sun. I love the brilliant red of the Japanese Maple in fall, especially
when it contrasts with other trees whose leaves are orange, yellow or even the many
shades of evergreens. Then, there are the shaded browns and tans of the natural
formations polished by wind and water in Antelope Canyon, or the white flowers
of dogwood and pinkish-red of the redbuds I saw as I drove through the spring
forest back home. I didn't know them as jolts of joy then, but now, as I remember
them, their memories have sharpened over the years, and I've learned to see
them as moments of beauty and color, things that represent joy to me.
I think that for some people, joy might be diamonds, big
houses, shiny new cars, trips to foreign places, or any one of a million
things. For me, though, I've found the simple things (or sometimes more complex
ones) remind me that joy is a gift to be treasured. I don't think God would have
spent a lot of time creating a world without so many colors, shapes, textures,
and sizes had God not enjoyed the process so much. So undoubtedly, I should
take every possible moment to enjoy them and send up a small arrow prayer toward
heaven to say, "Thank you."
Where do you find your jolts of joy?
God bless.
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