By Steven Norris
When I was teaching middle school, one of the primary lessons that I sought to instill in my students was the importance of their choices and the corresponding consequences. I am quite certain that they frequently got tired of hearing me, “You are not a victim of your circumstances. Take responsibility for your decisions and learn from the results.”
The split second between stimulus and response is perhaps one of the most important and overlooked moments that regularly confront all people. We do not have control over many of the stimuli of our day. It could be a traffic jam on the way to work, an internet outage in the middle of the day, a cranky cashier at the checkout line, a co-worker’s mistake that negatively impacts your job, or the latest political rant on the television. Such stress-inducing stimuli are just a part of life.
I refer to this moment as the “moment of agency.” We all have it — the chance to decide how we are going to react to the stimuli that comes our way. We can choose to mirror the hatred, stress, violence, and anxiety that we see in our world or go a different way. The choice is not unlike the biblical character of Joshua when he was leading the people of God into the Promised Land. Confronted with the gods of the surrounding people, he said to the Israelites, “choose this day whom you will serve…but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
I was reminded of this lesson over the weekend as our church hosted the musician, Ken Medema. Ken is an accomplished composer, pianist, and singer. Visually impaired since birth, Ken’s sight is limited to some light and fuzzy shadows of large objects. At age eight, he learned to play the classics on piano using Braille music as well playing by ear. While there were surely moments in Ken’s life where he could have adopted a victim mentality, he chose to find ways around his limitations.
On a smaller and more practical level, I was struck by the conversations that he and I shared over meals throughout the weekend. He talked about worries and stresses over the political climate in our nation and the deep pain of violence around our world. Yet, he chose joy. For anyone who attended the concert, you could not help but be captivated by the joy. We sang, danced, hugged, and laughed throughout the shared time together.
It strikes me that joy is a choice. In that “moment of agency,” we can choose this day whom we will serve. Will we mirror the name-calling, hate, and division we see in the news or choose the counter-cultural option of joy in the Spirit? Will we opt for wringing our hands as victims or will we dance to the rhythm of God’s grace and mercy?
I am grateful for the witness of servants like Ken who remind us that joy is not only a fruit of the Spirit, but it is an intentional choice to let it be manifest in our lives.