A Word – From Silence

Joy

Yep, that’s the word…

joy.

So it happened like this.  There I was lying on a lovely swinging bench, listening to the lapping water on the lakeshore and admiring the trees above.  The highest branches danced in the wind and the sun was peeking through clouds here and there to light softly upon the leaves.  It was gorgeous.

Then I heard it, yep…the voice of God (it had been 3 days of silence) say, “Hannah I take such joy in you.” Beautiful, gorgeous, thank you God! I’m feeling all warm and fuzzy

It was short-lived because wait there is more…

“Hannah, where do you find joy for yourself anymore?”

Wow God! Just WOW! There’s a doozy of a question.

So I laid there for a minute, yep, a bit disgruntled, and then I was like, “in reading! I love to read and I take great joy in reading GOD!”  And if God had a face…this was the one she made:

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Sigh…okay, so the books I read might feed my soul and bring me joy in deep meaningful ways, but yeah, God has a point, they don’t exactly have that light, playful, dancing leaves in the wind, make you laugh out loud quality to them…

So yeah, maybe I’ve been missing something here.  I thought long and hard about the books that bring me that kind of joy.  There are “beach reads” but I wouldn’t call them joyful really. And there have been a couple of novels that make me laugh out loud, but usually they are still deeply poignant social commentaries on life and our future as a society.  So, I laid awake last night, no joke, thinking about this and the books I have thus far named as pure unadulterated joy are “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories.”  There were these two books as kids that my parents would read to all of us and we would be on the floor laughing, if my dad could get through them of course.  I have no idea how they have held up, but I might just try to find some copies somewhere and give them a try ;).

But you are not off the hook here, because I know there are way more joy-filled books out there. So my question Book War Readers is, “what are your favorite joy filled, and joy as in that childlike, playful, laugh out loud kind of joy…books?”  And seriously, no pressure, but basically you are now all responsible for me finding joy again, sooooooo…don’t let me down!

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Happy reading everyone!