It happened three weeks before Christmas. My wife, Joanne, and I had just decorated the house. The family down the street had an inflatable Santa Claus. Our next-door neighbors had icicle lights. Us? Three big wooden signs strategically placed and illuminated with spotlights: Love, Joy and Peace, they read. The gifts of the Holy Spirit.
What can I say? I’m a pastor. My decorations had to mean something! People loved our display, a tradition since 1982. We were known as the Love, Joy and Peace House. Strangers would drive by all month to take pictures. Some would even leave us thank-you notes.
So I couldn’t believe it when I opened the front door one morning and discovered that the Joy sign was gone. The wires attaching it to the eaves had been clipped. Why on earth would someone do that?
“Maybe the thief was depressed and thought stealing Joy would cheer him up,” Joanne said.
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I had to laugh. But I also wondered. Why would God let someone steal my Joy? I didn’t have the time—or the heart—to make a new sign.
By Christmas Eve, I still had no answers. Though I did get a good sermon out of the story—how to find joy in a sometimes crazy season. After the service, one of my parishioners, Edyie, approached me, a tall man with shaggy brown hair at her side. She introduced him—her ex-husband, Tom. I’d heard a lot about his troubled past. Edyie had been hauling him to church recently in the hopes that it would do him some good. Now she wanted to know if I was available for couples counseling. I was happy to help. Tom didn’t say a word until the very end.
“Pastor, I can make you a new Joy sign if you’d like,” he said. “I’m a carpenter, you know.”
“That’d be great,” I said. “Let’s talk more after Christmas.”
We started the counseling sessions in early January. Week after week, Edyie and Tom would come and sit in my office. It was clear that Tom would rather be anywhere else. He was a man broken down by life. A grade-school dropout, an ex-con, a compulsive gambler and drug user. Underneath it all, though, I sensed that there was a tender soul that yearned to be free. He was the kind of guy who would give his last dollar to a stranger. And he sure loved Edyie, I could tell. But he had no interest in God, in forgiveness or in any other message of redemption I offered. After three months, I was ready to give up.
Tom didn’t forget the Joy sign, though. In April, he called to let me know that he’d completed the project. I took him out for dinner to thank him. Tom seemed nervous. He fiddled with his menu, then put it down and blurted, “Pastor, I get it.”
“Get what?”
“The key to love, joy and peace.”
“Yes?”
“It’s God.”
The revelation had come a week earlier. Tom had been cutting the wood for the Joy sign when a strange thought crossed his mind. Where do love, joy and peace even come from? And then it hit him: There is no love or peace without God! And that is the very key to joy. He was so convinced of the message that he used some extra plywood to make a fourth sign. One that said simply God.
I couldn’t have been more shocked if he’d told me he wanted to become a cake decorator. The Tom who sat before me—humble, repentant, full of awe—was not the same Tom who’d been dragged in for couples counseling. Before I could respond, he bowed his head, right there in the middle of the restaurant.
“God, I know I’m a really big sinner,” he prayed. “I’ve sure made a mess of my life. I need you to take over.”
That night, joy returned in more ways than one.
