The Fullness of Joy!

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.  John 15:11

Some days I drive a lot for work, and as it turns out I spent several hours on the road today.  Idle time for me can be a fun or should I say – bizarre time.  I wonder if everyone does it – this whole flight of ideas kinda thing…start out with a snippet of a thought that takes you down the rabbit hole and leads to all kinds of things.  Today I started thinking about my childhood, actually, one particular day in my childhood.

I must have been ten or eleven years old and it was the first snow day off from school for that particular winter.  Anthony and I decided to make some cash, grabbed shovels and headed over to the motherlode – Euclid Ave.  I have no idea what those people on that street did for a living, as a matter-of-fact I don’t think I ever knew a single soul that lived there, but that street had the nicest houses in town.  There were big Victorians, Tudors and styles that I don’t even know the names of, all of which had the biggest, nicest yards with grand old trees and boxwood hedges.  But the best thing of all, to a couple of snot-nosed kids on the first snow day of the year, was these rich folks had long sidewalks and big driveways!

So on this particular day we headed down Euclid and found a corner house, talked to the lady inside and contracted for the whole sidewalk.  I don’t know how long it took us to finish the shoveling, it seemed like hours, of course half that time was filled with snow angels and snowball fights.  When we were finished we showed the rich lady the completed job and she paid us five dollars!  Let me say that again – five dollars!  In those days that was huge!  We felt like the richest kids in town, so much so that we decided that with this single job we had done a day’s work!

Anthony and I were just elbows and teeth as we ran, whooped and hollered the few blocks from Euclid Ave to Cozy Corner, the little general store-wanna-be-diner down on Johnson and Washington.  I might be wrong, but this may have been the most money we ever had and the only thing on our minds was - candy! 

Cozy Corner was one of those general stores you expect to see in the Andy Griffith Show – I think I remember wide planked wood floors and a counter with that huge glass front with all the candy behind it.  Anthony and I stood there gawking at all the goodies trying to decide what to get when the lady (would it be too much to say she had a beehive hairdo and horn-rimmed glasses?  I really think she did) told us to hurry up and decide.  Now-and-Laters (all three flavors), Chunky chocolate bars, Cowtails, Chick-O-Stix, and a quart bottle of Coca Cola in a big glass bottle that needed an opener to pop the top.  I don't remember how much we payed, or if we had any money left over, but I do remember that DING! the old cash register made as we handed over our cash.  

But the best part of the day, my favorite memory, is of Anthony and me…sitting in the cold with our snow pants on, a light snow still falling, and the two of us just sitting on the stoop outside the old bakery a couple doors down from Cozy Corner.  In my mind’s eye I am still ten or eleven and when I think of that moment, even today, I smile.  I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

So that’s where my thinking today started.  That moment some 35 years ago.  Then I started wondering…how much of my adult life have I spent trying to get back to that moment?  What have I been looking for?  The Youth?  The innocence of a couple of goofy kids sitting on a concrete stoop in the snow eating candy?  I don’t know.  I wracked my brain for several miles, then it came to me:  what I’ve been looking for is the joy.  That youthful, innocent, stress-free, goofy joy of childhood.

I don’t know if I’ve found it yet, but it occurred to me that in the last several weeks I certainly do sense a change.  I don’t know if it’s simply the idea of casting all my cares on Jesus, or maybe it's because my new yoke is light.  Maybe I’ll never have that same joy, it might be kinda creepy if I did, but I am learning…one moment at a time…to find the fullness of the joy of Jesus.