The Rev. John Sumwalt enjoys a Milwaukee Brewers game at American Family Field in Milwaukee with his family. Left to right are Phoebe Hornickel, Kati Sumwalt Hornickel, Leo Sumwalt, Liam Sumwalt, Back Row: John Sumwalt, Mark Hornickel, Faye Hornickel, Kelli Green Sumwalt, Orrin Sumwalt. (Courtesy Photo)
Special to United Methodist Insight | Aug. 19, 2026
Joy seems so simple when we have it. The laughter of children playing, a father singing as he tucks his daughter into bed, the hug of a grandmother, Sunday dinner with family, the triumph of a teenager winning a race, the satisfaction felt after a hard day’s work, the contented sigh of an old dog asleep on the couch: simple things we take for granted until they are gone.
After four years of being homebound and unable to drive the car, I find great joy in being able to drive to the store for groceries or to run over to the hardware store to get a box of wood screws. Simple things.
I lost my joy for a time when I was battling mold illness and chronic Lyme disease. Both body and Spirit withered. I missed going to church and to family gatherings. It took great effort to get out of bed, to take a shower, and it took a monumental effort to call a friend and to find the energy to carry on a conversation.
It was a struggle to maintain my sense of self. My wife and family, our friends, our church and my doctors all struggled to hold me up as I sank deeper and deeper into that joyless pit that everyone who has endured debilitating illness knows too well.
After treatment at the Biologix Center for Optimum Health in Nashville, I felt my energy returning. Slowly my joy and passion for living have returned. I can tell “dad jokes” again and laugh with our grandchildren. Simple joys.
Joy is a sense of the rightness of things. It is both a feeling and a deep-in-the-soul kind of knowing that all is well. We don’t think much about it until it is lost. The Swedish film director, Ingmar Bergman, said to a friend one day, “I’m about to lose my joy. I can feel it physically. It’s running out. I’m just drying out inside.”
If you have ever lost your joy in life then you may have prayed this prayer, found in the 126th Psalm, by a people who had lost everything in a devastating war and were beginning to doubt that they would ever be whole again. The psalmist prayed: “Restore our fortunes, O Lord… May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy.”
Restore my Joy!
This is the desperate prayer we pray when all seems lost. O Lord, we cry out from the depths of sorrow after the tragic death of a loved one, when our whole being aches physically and spiritually for the one we have lost; restore my joy! It is the plaintive prayer that bubbles up out of a broken heart when we have separated from a spouse or a dear friend. It is the anguished, wordless cry, the inexpressible sorrow that erupts from within when we have lost our purpose in life, our reason for being. Restore my joy, we cry. And God does.
Paul Tillich writes in his meditation on this psalm that “joy is the expression of our essential and central fulfilment.” This is what God restores and it is something only God can do.
I once officiated at the funeral of a long-time church member whose beloved son, Edward, had died tragically at the age of 16. Her family told me that after Edward’s death Violet cried every day for a year. And she would get up every day at 6:00 A.M. to visit his grave before she went to work. She cried so much that her tears ducts were beginning to dry up.
Then one day Violet woke up and Edward was standing at the foot of her bed. He said, “Mom, you have got to stop this crying. I am where I am and nothing is going to change that.”
From that day on, Violet began to get better and was able to go on with her life, her joy restored.
The Rev. John Sumwalt (Courtesy Photo)
The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired United Methodist pastor and the author of “Shining Moments: Visions of the Holy in Ordinary Lives,” email johnsumwalt@gmail.com,