Gateway to Joy
Good Morning Friends,
My mom and I met yesterday at breakfast to discuss topics for a devotional. A little like Jesus in the Upper Room at Passover (remembering the story of the Exodus and God’s deliverance in the symbolic retelling of historic events), we pick an experience of a shared memory and then add on to it others that come to mind making it new each time we eat. On this occasion I shared a memory of my mom taking a newly caught Pompano, painting one side of it and then imprinting the image on rice paper in our kitchen near the beach in Naples.
The picture I want in your head is of the fish suddenly flopping around as if she had resuscitated it just at the moment she pressed the fish to the paper. It was a bit of a mess and not exactly a happy moment, at the time, but when combined with others involving the Huha Family, our neighbors up in Southern Illinois, with the slightly off color name, it became a Gateway to Joy.
Scripture: Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
Nehemiah 8:10 (NRSV)
The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9 (NIV)
Now I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even as I delivered them to you.
1 Corinthians 11:2 (ESV)
Message: The Fish Gate was an ancient gate on the east wall, just west of the Gihon spring in Jerusalem. Men gathered there to sell fish. One can imagine that Peter, James and John, as fishermen, rough around the edges, had been to this place. It was not always a joyous place. Fish can get pretty stinky. Still the image of the fish became an important symbol for the early Church. It was a secret code that opened up a discussion about Jesus…Jonah and the great fish…the feeding of the 5000 and the 4000….of Jesus cooking a breakfast for the disciples in Galilee….of the disciples casting their nets on the other side…of the disciples becoming fishers of men. All the memories around these experiences are really a bit mixed emotionally until Jesus is added as the secret ingredient. My friend Carl explains it this way. A cake tastes great but the ingredients… the oil, the raw eggs, and the flour individually are not all that desirable. It is only after they are baked together with a sweetener that the final product is ready. So too it is with our memories that are not yet joyous.
Pray we enter by the narrow gate. Pray that God produce in us a repentance without regret that leads to joy and salvation. Pray we rejoice and give thanks. Pray we have a Galilean breakfast with Jesus. Pray we realize that our cake is still half baked.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 