Rejoice in the Lord

How suffering reveals our heart's true shape, and invites us to be re-shaped into a people of kingdom-come

“Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.” Philippians 3:1 NRSV

Here we are, the Monday after Thanksgiving… already technically in the Advent season… but I’m still wrestling through a healthy and Biblical concept of gratitude so I hope you’ll hang in there with me. I think these last couple of sections will lead us right into Advent ponderings, which I plan to start sharing at the back end of this week. Advent reflections will be audio-based reflections, which I hold sacred for paid subscribers. I’d love for you to join me for those, so click the link below to subscribe. You might also wish to gift a subscription to a loved one, or donate one to a reader who might benefit from a subscription but cannot afford it. I’ll include buttons for those options as well.

When life feels hard–when there are big or small things to lament over–this verse feels a bit difficult to read. If you’re someone who prides themselves on being a “good Christian,” you might read this verse and internally resolve to be happier more often–to focus on things that spark positive emotions only. If you’re more cynical (and maybe more honest), you might bristle when reading this verse. “Rejoice? In what, Paul?”

And that question, if we’re willing to listen, is one that Paul is happy to answer for us.

“Rejoice in the Lord.”

Many of you are aware that our family recently moved from Florida to South Carolina. Our first house in Florida was a lucky find for a brand-new married couple–less than 5 years old, in a neighborhood with people we loved, and just big enough for our not-yet-started family. It wasn’t my favorite style, which I was often frustrated with, but everything worked and repairs were mostly minor or not necessities.

Then, things shifted, and living in that house was no longer safe. Despite being in a wonderful neighborhood, there were situations that warranted installing bluetooth-enabled security cameras, and my husband stopped sleeping to watch said cameras through the night.

This is a crude over-simplification of the situation, but it was a lack of physical and emotional safety that sparked our move out of our home and to South Carolina. Much about our new house is the same–we share a neighborhood with people we love dearly. We have plenty of space–even more than we had in our home in Florida. The neighborhood feels a bit like Mayberry, and my husband is so close to home he can walk.

The drawback? The home is old.

It was built in 1962, with some significant updates done sometime in the late 80’s or 90’s as far as we can tell. We bought the home from a man who seemed to be trying to update it again, but for whatever untold reason he sold it to us before gaining much traction.

Having an old home upends much of the struggles I had in my Florida home–which felt too modern and “model-home-esqe” for my more traditional taste. But, it also means there are more pressing and significant updates that need to be done. Already, we’ve had to demo our bathroom due to a leak, and due to a multitude of factors it’s a DIY project that probably won’t be finished until well into the New Year.

Each time something goes wrong in this new house, I feel a twinge of shame, frustration, and regret. My instant wondering is whether we made a mistake to sell our first home, move a few states away, and settle in an old home. Trouble skews my vision, so that I forget the restlessness of my husband after our scary incident, the difficulties we were having being in that place, and the joy of being near new friends and closer to family. When things go wrong, I only see and feel the stress of problems in this home.

In that moment, my human brain hardwired for survival longs for what felt familiar and comfortable, even if that “familiarity” was coming with a high price tag for my family.

“The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’” Exodus 16:2-3 NRSV

I love the Old Testament, because I feel like it shows the story of human nature so clearly. I am Israel, and they are me. At the first sign of trouble, though God has proven to be faithful and kind, I am tempted to hunker down into scarcity, regret, and comfort. Nevermind that I was in slavery back there, I’ll take slavery that I can predict over freedom that I don’t yet know how to navigate.

This is the spirit shining through Paul’s reminder to rejoice in Philippians 3, and it’s what carries the letter all the way into chapter 4.

The Greek for “rejoice” is not a giddy, emotion-laden happiness. The word Paul uses here can also be translated “farewell,” “to be well,” or “thrive.”

So, the sentiment that Paul is communicating in this section is to thrive in the Lord through the difficult situations we face in our daily lives. We’ll talk about the practical application of this in the next article, but I want to take note of how Paul continues from here.

His next words are of warning–beware of false teachings. In other words, beware of things that have a form of the gospel, but not the heart of the gospel. Then he shares a personal example of how he embodied worldly values in his religious expression before coming to Christ. Then, more famous words:

“Yet whatever gains I had, I regard as loss because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord… I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.” Philippians 3:7, 10-11 NRSV

Paul recognizes that his mind, heart, and body are trained in the ways of the world. The things he naturally valued before coming to Christ still live on. He sees his life as the opportunity to retrain himself out of worldliness and into the shape of Christ. He sees the hope of the resurrection, but recognizes that the path of the world isn’t through suffering and therefore misses the power that Christ had in his life.

When we suffer, it’s an opportunity to become aware of our heart’s shape, and learn in this lab of life how to embody kingdom realities more fully.

“Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead.” 3:13

“But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. He will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enable him to make all things subject to himself.” 3:19-21

So, for us, dear readers, I think the challenge is this–will we remain tethered to hope and seek first the kingdom even in the midst of the most difficult challenges? Will we lean into suffering as an invitation to notice where our hearts remain shaped by the world instead of shaped by the hope of kingdom-come?

Will we see our longings as invitations to learn to long for the kingdom while aching for what we don’t yet have? Will we see our days of being poured out for others as an invitation to learn to love the sacrificial love that God deems to be so good? Will we hunger and thirst with eyes set toward him in faith?

Will we fare well as we suffer? Will God’s kingdom thrive through what feels so challenging? And might we dare to chance gratitude for these things that feel so hard in the hopes that they are in fact the very things transporting out of the world and into the eternal kingdom of light?

I hope so.

The next bit of Philippians I’d like to reflect on with you is the oft-quoted “whatever” scripture (4:8-9). It will be a guided-meditation form, to see this section as a spiritual discipline. Not to deny, ignore, or minimize what is truly hard in our life, but rather to take intentional time to spot kingdom realities in all that is good, beautiful, hard, and agonizing. I hope you’ll join me.

Until then.