We are not suggesting that we bring “Joy to the World” back for one more rousing encore after the weeks just past. But we are thinking about the absolute joy of being Christ’s Church in this moment.
It isn’t easy to talk about joy, as the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) trenchantly observed:
The precision of pain and the blurriness of joy. I’m thinking
how precise people are when they describe their pain in a doctor’s
office. Even those who haven’t learned to read and write are precise:
This one’s a throbbing pain, and this one’s
a wrenching pain, and this one gnaws, this one burns and
this is a sharp pain and this
is a dull one. Right here. Precisely here, yes, yes.
Joy blurs everything. I’ve heard people say
after nights of love and feasting, It was great,
I was in seventh heaven. And even the space man who floated
in outer space, tethered to a space ship, could only say, Great,
wonderful, I have no words.
The blurriness of joy and the precision of pain—
I want to describe with a sharp pain’s precision
happiness and blurry joy. I learned to speak among the pains.
(Translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld)
The precision of pain, over against the blurriness of joy. We think most pastors and church boards don’t need that explained in the midst of ministry today. The pain is all too precise, and our culture’s vocabulary for it just grows and grows.
Case in point: the Oxford Word of the Year for 2025 was rage bait. Rage bait refers to online content intentionally designed to provoke anger, frustration, or outrage, increasing engagement (likes, comments, shares) for platforms and creators, often through inflammatory statements or misinformation.
But older words for pain stay in service as well. The career platform Glassdoor chose good old fatigue as their 2025 word of the year. (Their 2023 word of the year was “anxiety.” The 2022 word was “divisive.”) Why fatigue? Glassdoor’s survey of workers in 2025 found them deeply tired, questioning the impact of AI on their prospects and feeling shaky about future employment. “It’s anxiety on top of anxiety and that has led to utter fatigue,” the website explained.
We have no doubt that your church board feels all of these currents in North American religion right now. Present in worship are people who feel baited and enraged, people who are deeply tired, people who tremble with fear.
And yet, at our best, the church of Jesus Christ has not just a word, but the word to speak into rage, fatigue, deep anxiety, fear. Never has the hope and love of our faith been more needed. Never has the mission of the church – to proclaim this hope and love – been more clear.
What if we all entered 2026, amid ever more precise descriptions of pain, understanding that our work together is to make the joy of faith just a little less blurry?
Think about some pain you recently experienced. What words would you use to describe it to others?
Think about some joy you recently experienced. What words would you use to convey that to others?
Why is it that we “learn to speak among the pains,” as Yehuda Amichai says?
When in the past year has your church board talked about joy? Or, how could you start that conversation in 2026?
How might you work together as a board to make the joy at the center of ministry a little less blurry?
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