This buds for you!

I love roses! I don't like to be given roses, but I love the challenge of growing them. Hybrid teas are my thing because they can be quite persnickety. Cultivating these roses brings me joy. Joy is what I really want to hit on this week since I was involved in a lengthy Facebook conversation about happiness, contentment, and joy.

A dear friend posted this week asking what percentage would her friends be at in the category of happiness. I responded to this by saying that for me I no longer strive for happiness. I choose joy. Pure, unadulterated joy. The kind that makes you feel like you have bubbles of giddiness on the inside. That to me goes beyond happiness. That is what I seek in my life. My roses are only one of many things that bring my joy.

I have spent years searching for happiness only to find that I couldn't quite get there. It was fleeting. I would get new things and they would make me happy for a while, but then the happiness was gone. I would begin my search again trying to reach the completely happy stage. It finally dawned on me that I was searching for the wrong thing. Joy is what I was really searching for- not happiness. I was looking for something that I was pinning my emotions on, and I should have been searching for the deeper, connected feeling of joy.

Romans 15:13 says, "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit." I loved The Message version of this verse even more, "Oh! May the God of green hope fill you up with joy, fill you up with peace, so that your believing lives, filled with the life- giving energy of the Holy Spirit, will brim over with hope!" I love this version for many different reasons.

I think first about the color green which is a color of peace. Think about how many things in nature are green! When you google what does the color green mean there are so many I couldn't even begin to list all of them. Green is soothing. When I look at the blue sky and the green of the trees and grass next to it, I feel such peace. Joy, really. Seeing the green in this version of the verse reminds me of Psalm 23 and the "green pastures" we lie in. It connects the two verses together. There are several other verses in the Bible that reference the color green. Most are relating to olive trees or trees of some variety or other.

The second part that I love is the "fill you up" part. Man- fill me up with joy, peace, and life giving energy of the Holy Spirit! Now that's a true fill up! Pay attention to the fact that it's not just getting filled up, but "will brim over with hope!" I am being filled up to overflowing with joy, peace, and the Holy Spirit which gives me energy, so much so that I now have hope! This is why I now seek joy. Lord- let my tank never go empty when I can come to you for this kind of fill up!

I want that kind of joy in my life. So much joy that I spill over and affect others with my life giving energy just because the Holy Spirit has filled me up and now I am brimming with HOPE! That is way beyond happiness! That is my desire in life!

My roses remind me of this. My pictures this time are a sequence of the same roses as they sat in my house for the week. Starting as small buds, they have a powerful fragrance and beauty- like us when we discover joy. Our joy is small at first, but we know it's there. Then we begin to open up and bring more joy to our lives which brings joy to others. The more we are nurtured the more we open and the more joy we bring. Even when our bodies, like the stems, grow weak and we no longer feel young, we still are capable of bringing joy. When my roses are too weak to stay alive, I pull off the petals and save them because the smell of them continues which brings me joy. How many times have we thought of loved ones that have passed on and been brought joy by the memory? These things make us "brim over with hope!"

As you go about your week this week, ask the Holy Spirit to fill you with joy, peace, and life giving energy, so much so that you "brim over with hope!" And if you see any roses, know that buds for you!