The joy of Easter is real. As we enter the final month of a year-long focus of cultivating love, we are invited to embody that love. In so doing, we might just end up cultivating joy as we are emboldened and filled with the promise and joy of Easter. Joy comes in various ways but May provides plenty of opportunities to experience it. Joy will be experienced through the movement and observance of 50 days of the Easter season. It can be felt through the longer days as spring stretches daylight, and we move ever closer to summer. Joy can be witnessed through the excitement and hope of graduation and confirmation season (in many contexts), and the anticipation of summer and what that might mean for vacations and new experiences. May is a month of celebration which in and of itself, at its best means a time of true joy.

Questions for Reflection:

  • In what ways have you seen, witnessed and experienced God cultivating joy in you? In others?
  • How might God be inviting you to cultivate joy?
  • What are two or three ways that you will cultivate joy this year?
  • As we enter into this twelfth and final month of the cultivating love themes and focus on joy, what might God be inviting us to be a part of next? What’s next for you and your faith community? Where might we be sent next as God’s beloved?

Suggested Hymns and Songs:

I’m So Glad, Jesus Lifted Me  (ELW 860 & WOV 673)

Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee (ELW 836 & LBW 551)

My Life Flows on in Endless Song (ELW 763 & WOV 781)

Welcome Table (ACS 969)

Other Theme Considerations and Potential Connections:

  • “Cultivating Joy” provides an opportunity to celebrate and lean into and out of the joy of the Easter season. As graduates look with anticipation at what life might bring next, as we all might look with anticipation of the summer months to come, and we move to close this year of “Cultivating Love” together, ponder with your faith community what might be next. Where might we be sent as God’s people next? How will we go with joy?
  • The May calendar is full of joy, with observances including the majority of the Easter season, Ascension of our Lord, longer days, and graduation season. It is also Asian Pacific Islander Awareness Month and Mental Health Awareness Month. With all of these observances in mind, how might these be opportunities to further cultivate joy in your community?