Tonight I had an experience similar to one found in Acts 2. Acts 2 is the passage where the Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost. The passage in chapter 2 tonight that I really could relate to with the coming of the Holy Spirit was verse 13 which said, “Some, however, made fun of them and said, "They have had too much wine.” Tonight at the final Tulip Time parade some of my wonderful friends and I had a lot of fun. We yelled at friends going by in the parade. We ate a lot of great food. We cheered for bands. We laughed together. We Dutch danced to The Nadas. My friend Joy and I shared a chair. We laughed and chatted with my students. It was a good night. A fun night. A night filled with joy. A night where many who saw us probably said they are drunk. No. That is not true. If those strangers knew me they would know it is not true.
What I was experiencing tonight was something greater than any beer or wine it was TRUE HOLY SPIRIT JOY. For some people being a follower of Christ means it is wrong, or frivolous, to display too much happiness or high spirits. The fruits of the Spirit will be evident in the lives of people who are walking with God. The second fruit mentioned in the Spirit’s list is JOY. Right after love the greatest of these is joy. Our joy had little to do with the food we ate, the bands that were playing, the people we saw or talked to. Tonight our joy came from a deep connection that we had with God and each other. We were celebrating the good in life tonight rather than complaining about all that’s wrong. We chose to have the joy of Jesus in our hearts. We all shared a Spirit-filled joy –a sense of having our lives all firmly founded on the rock of Jesus Christ. Any life with Jesus as its center is a joyful life, no matter what is going on in the world. Tonight was that kind of joy as we had a good time not caring what was going on around us.
