Joy is Resistance

What a day with my son taught me about refusing to let darkness have the final word.

Yesterday my son and I spent the day at Busch Gardens for an early birthday present.

The past few years we’ve tried to give experiences instead of more stuff and when we asked what he wanted to do, he didn’t hesitate. “Let’s go to Busch Gardens!” So we did.

We got up early, made the two hour drive and were standing at the gates when they opened.

We rode almost everything. Even though he loves roller coasters, there are still a few he’s yet to try. All the other ones were fair game though. And rode them we did.

About half way through the day a storm came through and just about cleared out the park. It was like we’d hit the lottery and had Busch Gardens to ourselves. We basically walked onto the rides. My voice is still a little rough today from so much yelling. Totally worth it.

One of my favorite moments happened during lunch. We were sitting there eating overpriced amusement park food, and Brock (my son) started making fun of the face I made at the top of one of the rides. He was laughing so hard he could barely get through what he was saying. Every time he tried, he’d start laughing all over again. I was laughing too, but mostly I was just watching him.

There are moments when you realize your child really isn’t a child anymore. He’s almost seventeen. Somewhere between teaching him to ride a bike and sitting across from him at the park, time just kept… moving. He’s grown into this funny, kind and thoughtful young man. I am incredibly proud of him. And even though I feel all those things about who is now, I still catch myself looking for the little boy who used to jump off the couch pretending to be a professional wrestler.

Toward the end of the day, we were walking toward the exit talking about how fast the day had gone by. I put my arm around him and said I was glad that he picked this for his birthday and said, “I love you, boy”. He smiled and said, “I love you too.”

I doubt I’ll ever forget that.

A few years ago, my wife suggested we stop buying so many presents and start giving experiences instead. She said that most gifts end up forgotten or tucked away in the back corner of a closet or in the trash. But time together doesn’t. Long after you forget what you opened on any given birthday, you will remember the day your dad drove you two hours just to ride roller coasters with you. She was more right than she knows.

It’s part of why the older I get, the more convinced I become that joy matters. Lately it feels like every day brings another headline or story that forces us to make room for more grief or more fear until it feels like darkness is the truest thing in the world.

That’s not true. Which is why I think joy is an act of resistance. I don’t mean joy as in pretending everything is fine. I mean joy as in seeing the world and all the brokenness it holds and refusing to let that be the final word. Joy doesn’t deny what’s real. But it does refuse to surrender to it. A good belly laugh, that one song, a day with someone you love… these are quiet declarations that the darkness does not own us.

As I thought through that today a story from the New Testament letter called Acts (an account of the early Jesus communities) came to mind. Paul and Silas, (two of the leaders helping these early communities figure things out) were falsely accused, beaten by a crowd, and thrown into prison with their feet locked in stocks. They had every reason to believe darkness had won.

The story says right around midnight they started singing. The other prisoners listened as these two wounded men filled that jail with songs. Only after that does the story say that there was an earthquake, the doors flew open and the chains fell off.

Honestly, I don’t always know what to do with stories like this. The longer I do this pastor thing, the less certain I am that literalism is the strongest way to read scripture. I don’t need to know how everything went down or if it went down at all for the story to hold truth. Sometimes we get so focused on whether the details in a story happened or not that we miss why the story was told in the first place.

It’s not the earthquake that I keep thinking about. It’s the singing. Freedom came after it. Before the doors opened, before there was any inkling things were about to change, Paul and Silas chose not to let the prison determine the condition of their hearts. They sang while they were still locked.

That feels like its own kind of freedom.

I think maybe, that’s the miracle most of us overlook. Joy doesn’t always arrive after we’re set free. Sometimes it’s the thing that keeps us free while we’re waiting for the doors to open.

So what do we do with that? How do we sing when people are being falsely detained, when families are grieving, when it feels like a tidal wave of bad news every time we open our phones? Talking about joy in the middle of all this feels almost… irresponsible. Like we’re ignoring all those things.

But I don’t think that’s what joy is. The historic Black church has always understood this. Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the refusal to let suffering become the whole story. Enslaved people sang before they were free. They sang while working in the fields, sang while families were torn apart, sang in the face of a system designed to convince them they were less than human. Those songs weren’t escapism. They were resistance. They were proof that chattel slavery could control their bodies but it couldn’t touch their souls.

James Cone wrote about this kind of suffering. He argued that doubt is a natural response to horror like slavery or the lynching tree, but that doubt never gets the final word. Faith does. And faith gives rise to hope. Their songs weren’t evidence that life was easy. They were evidence that oppression hadn’t taken everyone. Howard Thurman called it the “sound of the genuine,” the true self that each of us must learn to listen for and follow. I think joy is one of those sounds because it reminds us that love and beauty are still there.

That’s why I keep coming back to Paul and Silas. Whatever you make of that story, the order of things is crucial. They sang first… then came freedom. Their circumstances hadn’t changed, but they refused to let those circumstances dictate anything.

As I’m thinking through all this… maybe that’s why yesterday was so good. It wasn’t just the roller coasters, or the cheap food that tasted amazing, or getting lucky after a quick storm emptied the park. It was a reminder that joy is still possible. It’s possible in the middle of a world that keeps giving us reasons to despair.

When Brock was laughing so hard that he couldn’t finish his story, I wasn’t thinking about any of this. I was just looking at my son, watching this almost seventeen year old across the table, grateful that for one more birthday he still wanted to spend the day with me. That moment didn’t make the world less broken. But it did remind me what the work is for. We fight for a better world because moments like that should be possible for everyone, and because every parent deserves to watch their kid laugh without fear.

Yesterday didn’t distract me from that work. It sent me back to it with a full heart.

There will be a last roller coaster. A last birthday he wants to spend with us. A last time I put my arm around his shoulder on the walk to the parking lot before life carries him wherever it’s going to. Try as I might (and I do), I cannot stop those days from coming. What I can do is notice the gift while it’s here.

Maybe that’s what joy asks of us… not to ignore the darkness but to refuse it in making us miss what’s still beautiful.

Yesterday, joy found me in line for roller coasters, across the table from son over greasy food, hearing second hand how awesome the day was.

The headlines will still be there tomorrow. I’m glad yesterday wasn’t about them.

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