Super JOY

Did you ever learn the song that teaches you to spell Joy?

J-O-Y, J-O-Y
This is what it means
Jesus first, Yourself last, and Others in between.

In the song they spell out JYO, but that's just to make sure that the song rhymes. Basically it teaches you what the true meaning of Joy is.

Jesus
Others
Yourself

Well anyway... during the most recent week of Camp I learned about the truest form of Joy and what it truly means.

At camp, we give nighttime devotionals to each individual cabin. A lot of times the devos have something that ties into or reinforces what was discussed at chapels throughout the day, or the devos could just be something weighing on the minds of the counselors (or they could just be based on the first passage of scripture they open up to because they forgot to prepare for the night's devos, which coincidentally are sometimes the best devos ever given...it's a God thing for sure). At the most recent week of camp, it happened to be my turn to give a devo, and I decided that since they were the little kids I didn't want to get super philosophical or deep with them. So I had them repeat "Jesus loves me" over and over again.

"Jesus loves me."
"Jesus loves me."

I could see the kids faces brighten because they knew the song (We sing it all the time at Camp), but I wanted them to REALLY understand that Jesus loved them, so I decided to switch it up a little bit.
"Allright boys," I said, "This time, say Jesus loves, and then state your name!"

"Jesus loves Brice"
"Jesus loves Nate"
"Jesus loves Reid"
"Jesus loves Them."-  A little boy, Marshall, was continuously pointing at everyone else and saying that "Jesus loves them." I watched for the first two times, and after the third time everyone kind of quieted down and started getting ready for bed. So I walked over to Marshall curious as to why he was pointing at everyone else.

"Marshall, why didn't you say that 'Jesus loves Marshall'? Don't you know that Jesus loves you too!?" In my head I was thinking that he didn't believe Jesus loved him and I was devastated that a 5 year old could believe such lies.

"I Know Jesus loves Me, Brice. I just wanted to make sure that everyone else knew that He loved Them!" Marshall informed me with the brightest smile on his face, and accompanied by a slight giggle. Clearly, this kid was joyous at the fact that Jesus loved everyone in the room.

That's Super Joy. Jesus first, yourself last, others in between. A five year old gets it.. why can't we?

And so it goes...