The Cheerful Revolt of Returning to Joy
Indianapolis First Friends Quaker Meeting
Pastor Bob Henry
August 16, 2026
Good morning, Friends, and welcome to Light Reflections. The scripture I have chosen to support my message for this morning is John 4:10 from the Message version.
Jesus answered, “If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water.”
Friends, last week, after I shared about going to the sea to be renewed and revived, I had some great conversations about our travels, but one conversation had me thinking more about this “Living Water” that we hear about often in the scriptures.
Whether it was specifically the invitation to the Samaritan woman at the well or Christ’s invitation to each of us to partake in the “living waters” that flow from his heart, he was offering something that we seem to struggle to engage with still, today.
I will be the first to say, there are seasons when the Living Water feels far away.
It is like we are landlocked spiritually.
We may even look inside ourselves and find only a dry well.
The weight of the world, the static of our daily anxieties, and the sheer exhaustion of trying to manage life in our own strength can slowly extinguish our inner joy.
We do not lose our faith, but we lose our voice or maybe even the song of our heart – that spark of joy that gives us hope and purpose.
In our Quaker tradition, we know it is a mistake to fake this condition. We do not manufacture artificial joy (or at least we shouldn’t).
We should not force a smile to mask a heavy heart. To do so would be a violation of our commitment to integrity.
When joy is absent, we must first have the courage to acknowledge the silence and the emptiness.
As I started my sabbatical, I was in need of seeking the Living Water and I will be honest, my inner well was dry.
But I had to face and acknowledge what was causing my dryness. For me, social media, politics, family challenges, life changes, the struggles of my neighbors and friends, and just daily ministry were all weighing heavy on me as I entered my sabbatical time, and I knew I could not just flip a switch to return my joy.
Quaker Bruce Henry (I do not believe any relation to me), presiding clerk of the Religious Society of Friends in Australia echoes this truth; that we cannot flip a switch and be brought back into the light. In a reflection in The Daily Quaker Message, he says.
“It is very hard to find anything joyful if you are suffering grief, loss, pain or sadness... [He continues] For me those feelings don't stay with me, so I find myself returning to silent prayer over and over.”
Turning off social media and the news, alone, allowed me to enter the silence and hear again the still small voice of the Divine. I found as my three months progressed entering the silence became easier, and the Living Water returned - first as a trickle and by the end I sensed a fuller flow, again.
But let me not get ahead of myself.
A query that I needed to ask myself, and I know many of you struggle with, is
“Why does our joy leave us in the first place?”
Often, it is because we have allowed our outer busyness and the weight of the world around us to sever our connection to our inward Teacher.
We become captured by the "notions" of the world—the constant pressure to produce, to fix, and to control.
When we are overwhelmed, our instinct is often to hide. We retreat into the shadows of our own minds and seek to protect our exhaustion.
But folks, joy cannot grow in isolation.
If we wrap ourselves tightly in our worries, we block the Living Waters that are trying to refresh us. As the 20th-century Quaker sociologist and peace activist Elise Boulding wrote in her classic pamphlet:
“The real difference between happiness and joy is that one is grounded in this world, the other in eternity. Happiness cannot encompass suffering and evil. Joy can... Joy leaps into the future and triumphantly creates a new present out of it.”
Returning to joy requires a “holy” surrender. Did you know that we are offered a moment each week to do this right here? When we enter a quiet meeting for worship, we sit down with our weariness, and then have the opportunity to actively lay it down.
What I realized is that this does not just have to happened in worship, but it can happen anywhere. It could happen in your backyard, on a walk, in the car, sitting by the river or the sea (I think it might be easier there as I said last week).
Another thing I realized was that we must stop trying to solve ourselves. In his seminal book, A Testament of Devotion, 20th-century Quaker mystic Thomas Kelly described this process as "centering down" to a place of eternal peace. He says,
“The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy... It binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple adoration... This amazing simplification comes when we 'center down,' when life is lived with singleness of eye, from a holy Center where the breath and stillness of Eternity are heavy upon us and we are wholly yielded to Him.”
Joy returns when we realize that the Seed—the Christ within, the Divine Spark or Light (whatever we want to call it) - has never actually left us. It was merely buried under the rubble of our crowded and complicated lives.
When we quiet our own frantic spirits, we allow the soft, persistent warmth of God’s presence to melt the ice around our souls.
Richard Foster builds on this, reminding us that true joy frees us from taking our own egos too seriously:
“Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be light-hearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride.”
Even though Foster calls it a “cheerful revolt,” joy is not loud or boisterous. Rather, it’s a quiet, resilient peace. It’s the steady assurance that we are held in a love that does not depend on our circumstances.
When joy returns to you and me, it inevitably breaks outward into our actions. It alters how we walk in the world. It makes us tender, prompting us to notice the simple gifts we were previously too busy to see. I cannot agree with this more.
Friend Judith Goedecke beautifully observed:
“Faith and hope are not about believing everything will be alright. They call us to our purpose: to love one another. They call us to constantly cultivate love in quiet ways through it all… In turn, faith and hope promise us that... joy and love will comfort...”
Folks, true Quaker joy is experimental - meaning it is lived, tested, and experienced. That means it must be tried and honed in a community we can trust and feel safe in.
Thus, you and I can build the strength to face a broken world not with despair, but with a radical, quiet hope, together.
Let us sink down to that holy center today, so that we may leave this place ready to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.
Amen.
Now, as we center down and enter our time of waiting worship, think about what you need to surrender this morning and ask yourselves the following queries:
· Am I running, willing, or striving in my own strength right now, and has it crowded out my access to the Inward Teacher?
Am I expecting happiness (which depends on outward happenings) or am I actively centering down to cultivate joy?
What distractions or worldly pressures must I actively lay down on the floor of the meeting house today so that my mind can become still and receptive?
How can we, as a community, support one another when a Friend's light has grown faint, holding space for them until their joy returns?