¹⁰ Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the Lord is your strength. ~Nehemiah 8:10 (KJV)

“Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the presence of God.” ~Robert Schuller

There are times in our life when it seems that sorrow overcomes us, when true joy is nowhere to be found.

I remember a particular time in my life when this seemed to be the case. My husband and I had decided to take a position as the Senior pastor at a church that was in great distress. Together, we prayed about it extensively, seeking God’s will as we had often done in times past when other opportunities were raised.

In all of our praying and seeking wisdom, we never quite anticipated the reaction we would get from our daughter and her family once the decision was made. Even though we discussed the opportunity with them well in advance on a number of occasions, when the time came for us to move several hundred miles away, there was a sorrow, a loss, that went far deeper than any of us had realized would occur. Not only did they miss the support we had given to them as young parents, we missed being close with them. We also missed the time we had grown used to having with our only grandson, and he missed us dreadfully, as well.

On many occasions, we made time to go back and forth from our home to theirs, and they too came to visit us in the two years we were there; but with the long distance from Georgia to Virginia, it was hard to stay connected as we had been used to being.

And then, only a few short months after moving to Virginia, the very day that Jim was leaving for a trip to Mexico for a Pastor’s Conference, I received an urgent call from my family. It was one of my sisters letting me know that our mother had been diagnosed with terminal cancer and had only a few short weeks to live.

Dropping everything, I made the long drive from Virginia to Arkansas, praying the entire trip for  God to heal my mother if that were His will. However, God chose not to heal Mama, instead He took her home to glory early one July morning, exactly six weeks from her diagnosis date.

As the executor of the estate, I stayed on a few more weeks to ensure that the necessary things were done, before returning to Virginia. It was a sad and lonely time of missing my mother deeply as I stayed there in her little home. Making the long, long, drive back to Virginia was a very emotional experience. I wanted nothing more than to simply detour to my big old lovely home in Georgia and curl up on a soft bed and sleep for weeks. But that was not to be. In fact, my Georgia home was already up for sale. I felt as displaced as anyone could feel.

To top that off, when arriving back to Virginia, I immediately found out that our landlady had sold our rental house to a family member and was requesting that we be moved out by the end of the month. It was almost more than I could bear to think of boxing up my belongings and finding a new place to live.

In the midst all of that, and much more that I won’t go into in this devotional, I grew weary. Not only had I become tired physically with moving, driving the long drives to Georgia and Arkansas, the growing emotional distance between my daughter and her family, in losing my mother to death, and all of the turmoil in our living arrangements, I was emotionally and spiritually exhausted as well.

One day, shortly after we had finally found a second rental home and moved into it, a young woman from our church stopped by to visit. She is a lovely young lady about my daughter’s age, and a very polished business professional. She began sharing with me that she was worried about me, that she had seen that I was exhausted beyond belief, and she said she had a gift for me.

“It’s just a little reminder,” she said, “that our strength does not come from ourselves or the things of this world. Our strength comes from Him. I know that you know this, but I thought you might need a little reminder.”

Handing me a gift bag, she smiled. Inside I found a lovely yellow coffee mug, (the color of muted yellow that I so love) with the scripture inscribed on the sides,   “ . . . . the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10.

That small gesture of friendship and love did more than just add a new coffee cup to my collection, it brought with it a sweeping wave of joy. It brought hope that even though I had been questioning God’s will and direction in our lives, even though I was exhausted in every way, He still cared.

Today, as I sit at my desk writing, with my “joy mug” at my elbow, I am again reminded of the day that joy came calling.