There is a reason January is often considered the most depressing month of the year. We clink our glasses, wish each other a Happy New Year and look with anticipation at the brand new year stretching before us, untarnished and full of limitless possibilities. Then reality hits. We quickly come down from the high of the holiday season and settle back into our usual routines. Our well intentioned resolutions often fizzle out, our wallets feel the pinch and embodying joy can feel like an unattainable goal, a carrot dangling just out of reach.
In our household, after a long awaited and joy-filled break visiting family, reality hit hard. Transitioning to life back home without the support and presence of friends and family was hard enough until our our toddler, not content with suffering the seemingly never ending effects of jetlag, also contracted chicken pox. A three pronged attack that left us drained and discouraged. Suffice to say this was not my finest moment – as a parent, a wife, and a Christian woman who only a few days before had committed the entire year to purposefully practicing joy. I felt like a failure.
Then it dawned on me that maybe God was using these circumstances to try to tell me something. He does not promise us that the road ahead will always be easy, despite our very best intentions. There may be many trials and challenges ahead that will shake my resolve, or even my very beliefs to the core. The first few weeks of 2017 were certainly not a fantastic start to the new year on a personal level. Yet they were a nudging reminder that my circumstances, whatever they may be in 2017, should not dictate my joy.
Margaret Feinberg, in her book ‘Fight Back with Joy,’ writes, “When we fight back with joy, we no longer size the character of God according to our circumstances but we size our circumstances according to the character of God.” The joy that springs from this knowledge of who God is acts as our greatest tool in managing the challenges ahead. Do we allow our circumstances to overwhelm us and crush our spirit or harness a spirit of joy to crush those very same circumstances? Ultimately that choice is ours to make.
In Deuteronomy 16:15, the Israelites were commanded by God to partake in the Feast of the Tabernacles. This feast, as my study bible helpfully described, was a time for God’s people to rejoice in the Lord, to thank God for His provision to them through the harvest and to reaffirm that the year ahead belonged to Him. It was a poignant reminder to me at this start of this new year to make time to rejoice in the Lord. To simply say thank you for the blessings I have received from Him and to recognize His Sovereignty over not only the rest of this year, but my entire life. The Israelites were told that by doing this, their “joy would be complete.”
So is it possible to be joyful in January? I think if, like the Israelites, we can stop for a moment and celebrate the God who is Lord over our life (and our circumstances) and find something in our life to be thankful for -even in the midst of jetlag and chicken pox – that will be a very good place to start.