Thursday, December 18, 2025

Presence of Joy

By Melissa Harris

Life goes on pretty much how it does: days with good moments and trying moments; days with okay events where some people complain and whine and others celebrate and sing; days that blur from one inconsequential minute into other forgotten happenings.

Recently I got to break up the string of days with a trip to the Native American Christian Academy (NACA) in Sun Valley, Arizona. We arrived on the campus at an evening hour when the teaching staff and campus hosts were just catching their collective breath from the previous evening’s festivities of laser tag games, food, and family fun. The NACA students, ranging in ages from 5-17, went home for the Halloween weekend, so we missed meeting each of them personally, but we encountered the place where many prefer as their home, where life is safe and predictable with scheduled meals, running water, electricity, and supportive adults who teach life skills and academic foundations.

We arrived ready to bless the people who stepped into the NACA mission field in whatever way we could. The campus itself consists of 30 buildings arranged around a central courtyard. Each building has its own mission in campus life, serving as a chapel, dorm, classroom, toolshed, gym, staff living quarters, or art studio. In just about two years’ time, the Herndons have begun the transformational work of rejuvenating a place on the verge of collapse. 

This is where our team stepped in. We picked up buckets, ladders, scrapers, rollers, and paintbrushes to repair the deteriorating exterior of a main classroom building. We were a small team of five. We were just another group arriving at NACA to make just a little more progress toward realizing the vision of the greater NACA plan. What was business as usual for the NACA staff and resident volunteers was an opportunity for our Cortez team to share. We shared struggles and delights as we scraped away old paint from the weathered fascia and soffit while standing on shaky, bouncy ladders in desert glare. We glopped on Timberwolf Gray paint from eaves to side walls and smeared Mountain Moss green along window trims and borders. 

Hours and hours of transforming forgotten and decaying exterior into freshly renewed surfaces seemed imbibed with purpose. Maybe it could be compared to a kind of baptism for the classrooms, ready to be filled with the Spirit brought with students and teachers? The ensuing, labor-intensive, brush-cleaning routine gave us each pause to reflect on our work. Perhaps the cleaning of brushes and rollers with special cleaning implements, torrents of water, and perpetual patience practiced by painters could be likened to the life of a believer, continuously experiencing transforming graces of sanctification?

Maybe. Perhaps.

We left NACA with a sense of pride for completing more than anyone expected, but also with a sense of wanting to fully complete the tasks we started. After our two short days, we did not finish painting the apex, top trims, or soffit of the prominent north side of the classroom building. But we did show up and contribute, doing our part in our allotted time.

In our allotted time, I felt such a gladness awakening that only then did I realize what our work was really about. We were not doing anything very extraordinary. Yet the extraordinary was there with people who know Christ, who sing songs of praise in all circumstances, who have been restored to God’s family, who rejoice in Kingdom work no matter how uncomfortable or inconvenient or seemingly unimportant it is. It is a blessing that can only be described as joy.

Our experience was pure joy. 

This is the joy we believers know and experience when we are happy to do what we are being called to do and can share in the Spirit’s fruit with every step up and down a ladder or every comb through a paint-sodden brush. There is joy in the camaraderie. With one another and with Jesus. 

There is such joy to behold and share. It is easy to forget how much we are given and have to give to others in our regular workplaces and routine interactions with our usual people. But some days there are experiences where we focus on how grateful we are for safety, or how wondrous transformation can be, or how divine presence shows up in acts of patience. Sometimes His kingdom feels near. Every day has its moments and possibilities when we love one another and abide in presence of joy.