SUNBEAMS & OUR INNER CHILD

A sliver of light pushed its way through the gap in the curtains, crept over the worn parquet flooring of our house, and caught my eye as I passed with a basket of laundry in hand. I paused and let the sunlight warm me. I stood there longer than I intended, letting the light find me.

Outside, the day was cold and grey. I had brewed a cup of tea that now sat forgotten on the countertop. I had much to do, but that little sunbeam, audacious and stubborn, broke into my ordinary day and insisted I pay attention.

It reminded me of joy 

Joy is like that. Unexpected, sometimes uninvited, yet full of intent. It slips under the door of sorrow, over the walls of worry, and into the corners of our soul. Joy does not wait for everything to be sorted or healed. It comes in because God does.

“The joy of the Lord is your strength,” Nehemiah told a weary people.[1] And that joy was not dependent on perfection. It was born in the middle of rebuilding, in the middle of grief and hard decisions, in the middle of people returning home after years of exile. Their joy was rooted in the unshakable truth that God had not forgotten them—and that was strength enough.

This month, as I read the reports of the African churches who we walk alongside, I noticed something familiar. There it was again, a sunbeam.  A child singing over a shared meal. A woman laughing with her neighbor. A small group praying under a tarp in the rain. Joy had found them.

It finds us too. Sometimes in the form of an answered prayer and the quiet knowing that God is with us. Sometimes it finds us in a smile we offer a stranger or the call we make to a friend. These little sunbeams of joy are powerful in God’s hand.

All this reminds me of that childhood Sunday School song, the one that proclaims that Jesus wants me for a sunbeam. Today, I think I’ll lean into my inner child and sing along, offering myself as a sunbeam for Him.  

I invite you to join me.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

—John 1:5

May we think on these things!

[1] Nehemiah 8:10