Inexplicable

10-28-11

Sometimes I feel inexplicably joyful, where the joy just bubbles up out of somewhere that I can't identity. (Or it's flowing from Someone who I can most certainly identify.) But it's for no particular reason; it's not connected to a person or situation or anything, to my knowledge. It just is.

It comes when sunrise is pink and orange and streaks of red--what Homer would call "rosy-fingered dawn"--behind Bauxite Mountain. It comes when sunlight strikes through the leaves--green, red, orange, otherwise--and makes the trees look as if they're on fire from within. It comes from seeing the sea roil and writhe and dance and play upon the strand, the waves crashing and receding and making coral rocks into tiny little pebbles. It comes from good books and good movies and good conversations with good friends.

It comes from many things in my life. It brings a smile to my lips even if I don't necessarily feel like smiling. It is sharp and bright and warm and good, and it lifts my heart, even if it is inexplicable.

And maybe you don't know what I mean. Or maybe it comes in different ways to you and for you. It's hard to describe since it's a quality that comes through other things--maybe it's what C. S. Lewis called "Joy," even if that was just an attempt to describe something for which words are not deep enough.

And I'm not even sure why I decided to write about this. Maybe I've been in a rut lately, and God's pulling me, coaxing me out of it. I sure do like the predictable and safe. Yet God wants me to remember that any path He's put me on is safe because I'm with Him. Doesn't mean that I can't get hurt (or won't get hurt), but that, in the end, it will be all right.

And that just makes me feel at peace, at rest.

And inexplicably joyful.

More later.