A Roadmap to Joy: Finding God in Pain, Purpose, and the Unexpected
Season 2: Episode 41
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What if joy wasn’t the absence of pain, but something deeper, stronger, and always available?
In this powerful episode of Covenant & Conflict, David Blease sits down with author and missionary Bonnie Saul Wilkes to explore a lifetime journey of calling, sacrifice, and discovering what true joy really is.
From growing up with a Jewish last name in a Christian home…
to encountering antisemitism that sparked a lifelong calling…
to living on a kibbutz in Israel and eventually moving to the former Soviet Union to disciple thousands.
Bonnie’s story is marked by bold obedience and unexpected turns.
But what stands out most isn’t just the mission… it’s the joy she found along the way.
In this conversation, Bonnie unpacks:
- Why joy is not the same as happiness
- How joy can coexist with suffering, loss, and uncertainty
- The difference between joy, peace, and pleasure
- Why gratitude is one of the most powerful spiritual practices
- And how God leads us into joy through obedience, not comfort
Even through cancer diagnoses in her family, hardship in missions, and seasons of deep pain, she discovered that joy isn’t something you stumble into…
It’s something you walk into.
Her new book, A Roadmap to Joy, is the result of decades of journaling, poetry, and real-life encounters with God, and every story somehow leads back to one truth: Joy is always available in His presence.
Watch now and discover what it means to walk the pathway of joy.
Video Transcript
David (00:00):
Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Covenant and Conflict Podcast. My name is David Blease. I’m one of your hosts and I have a very special guest today with us. We have Bonnie Saul Wilkes. Thank you for being here with us.
Bonnie (00:19):
It is such a joy and honor to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Oh,
David (00:22):
Of course. If you don’t know Bonnie, you might know her husband if you’re a subscriber to our channel, Dr. Pastor Wayne Wilkes, who was founder of MJBI Messianic Jewish Bible Institute, which later basically became the Gateway Center for Israel. So he is like a spiritual grandfather to us all. We’re all standing on his shoulders. But as they say, behind every great man is a greater woman and that is Bonnie Saul Wilkes.
Bonnie (00:51):
Well, thank you. I’m humbled. Well,
David (00:54):
We’re so excited to have you. I’d love for people to really get to know you for a little bit, and then we’re going to dive into this book
(01:01):
That you just read. I know you’ve written other books as well, but we’re going to talk about this really hard to grasp concept of joy that’s often conflated or confused with happiness or circumstances. And I want to really talk about joy because it’s something that I’ve struggled with in my own walk of faith. But before we dive into all that, I want to just ground people. You and Wayne were at Shady Grove Church. Wayne was very instrumental in helping this church as a pastor and as an elder, helping them understand the role of Israel, the importance of Israel and the Jewish people. And that kind of percolated to you always feeling called to be missionaries and take this good news message to the nations. And it was kind of out of that love for Israel and the Jewish people that you guys went from Texas to the former Soviet Union.
(02:04):
So will you just talk a little bit about, and you don’t have to start there, but that’s kind of where I always start when I think of you guys together and the fact that we’re standing on your shoulders. So will you just take us back a little bit about yourself and that story?
Bonnie (02:15):
Well, I would say that was our second beginning. Okay. The very first beginning actually started with my parents. My maiden name is Saul. It’s a Jewish name, obviously. My father’s name, Benjamin Saul. Very Jewish. And my grandfather’s name, Benjamin Saul. So I was a kid that grew up with Jewish name and I was raised in the church, Assembly of God Church. Yeah. But at school, my classmates called me a dirty Jew. I didn’t know what that was. I came home and I said, “Hey mom, what’s a Jew?” My mother, who was a strong believer and lover of God’s word, this is way before the Messianic movement or even the ideas of Christians understanding that Jewish roots are very important. She took me to the passage that said that we should bless the Jewish people, that they were God’s chosen people. So that stayed with me forever.
(03:15):
And that was my very, very beginning and understanding. But she didn’t
David (03:20):
Identify as Judge.
Bonnie (03:21):
She did not, and we did not identify as Jews. But I knew that I was called to love Jewish people because I had a heart for the Lord at an early age. I wanted to obey his word and I wanted to obey this, although I didn’t quite understand it.
David (03:35):
You knew it was in your family history, but it was just this
Bonnie (03:38):
Biblical
David (03:39):
Concept.
Bonnie (03:39):
Right. And I prayed fervently to discover that. I did discover it later, that there is Jewish roots many few centuries back, but I actually found a living relative in England, which is another story. So then I went to nursing school after I graduated from high school and I wanted to be a kind of missionary nurse, but then I heard about Christ for the nations in Texas and that they were a strong missionary school. I was born in Colorado. So I went there in my early 20s and I wanted to take a biblical language and so Greek was full and so I took Hebrew and I flourished in it. I loved it. So I studied two years at Christ for the nations, formally Hebrew. And then suddenly I heard about a group that Christ for the nations was going to send to a Kibbutz and there were 30 of us that went for three months and we worked as volunteers and we did tell those Jewish people around us who were a lot of them Holocaust survivors about Jesus, but it was more like one-on-one kind of friendship relaying about who he really, really was, and they did have a lot of questions.
(05:06):
So it just so happened when I left the Kibbutz, this is quite an interesting story. I was there for almost three years and a young woman from what was then Rhodesia came to visit and she said, “God sent me to this Kibbutz. There’s someone I need to pray for and prophesy over.” So I just talked to her and told her that I was leaving the Kibbutz. I’d been there almost three years and she said, “Fast for three days and I want to give you a prophecy.” So I did that and then she came to me and she fell on the ground and started praying over my feet that my walk would be perfect before God. Wow. Not perfect in the sense of perfect, but flawless as I give my life and as I try to obey him. And she said, “You’re going to marry number one, a younger man and number two.” And in my mind I thought, “I don’t want that.
(06:10):
” And number two, she said, “You’re going to start a ministry for the Jewish people that will become international and you will be well known.” She left and I totally rejected those things. I thought, “I don’t want to marry younger man.” And what? I’m going to start an international ministry. And so I just rejected those things. Wow. And then I came back and did find Wayne. We met at Shady Grove Church and we connected and we-
David (06:43):
He was younger.
Bonnie (06:44):
And he was six years younger and-
David (06:48):
Check.
Bonnie (06:49):
Yeah. But you know what? I had forgotten about it and so I didn’t even think about the prophecy. And then about a year after we were married, the same prophet came and she wanted to find us. She found us. She happened to be in the States and she found us in Grand Prairie, Texas where we were serving at Shady Grove Church and she reminded me of the prophecy and she said, “Don’t forget the rest of it is to be yet fulfilled.” So we served there at Shady Grove for 14 years and we were a very strong missions minded church. Wayne was one of the first elders to see how vitally important it is to reach to the Jews, reach out to the Jews, to have ministry to the Jews, not only that, but that in Romans we learn, Romans one tells us that the gospel is to the Jew first and that it has to be central to any missions organization.
(07:50):
If you don’t understand that, then you’re not fully equipped in missions to reach the Gentile. You must reach the Jew first. And so we took this seriously and then we were eventually sent after communism fell, the Iron Curtain fell, the gospel just rushed in and there were so many people saved, Jew and Gentile during that time. We were part of that glorious revival. We had the honor of living there and starting a Bible school. We were there for three years. And then we actually, eventually we had 14 Bible schools and 14 nations and then we developed other means of educating people, preparing people for the gospel. But there were a lot of people saved and discipled in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe during that season.
David (08:51):
Yeah. Well, and when the communism fell, the hearts were so open to the gospel and something that your husband always says is the opportunity of a lifetime must be seized within the lifetime of the opportunity and your faithfulness to go when it was probably scary.
Bonnie (09:17):
It was scary,
David (09:18):
Yeah. Freezing.
Bonnie (09:20):
And
David (09:21):
Dangerous maybe. Right. Was this an excitement or was this reluctance to move? Because this wasn’t a mission trip. This wasn’t a
Bonnie (09:31):
Quick thing.
David (09:32):
This was the other part of your life, like you said, a new beginning.
Bonnie (09:35):
I have to say, anything new like this is scary, but we had more joy and expectation than we did fear. In fact, I remember like all of Shady Grove showed up at the airport the day we left and one woman pulled me aside and said to me, “How can you go? How can you go? ” And I said to her, without condemnation or anything, I just said, “How can you stay? How can you stay?” I mean, with tears in my eyes, I felt the need to share the gospel and to help disciple with Jews, thousands and thousands of Jews were being saved and they needed to be discipled. They needed a Bible school. And this was under Jonathan Burnis’s Hero Israel. He would have these large- Festivals. Festivals. They were wonderful. And it was Jewish dance and music and the Soviet people loved this and it was like reviving the heart for their culture again.
(10:43):
But in the end, Jonathan, as a Jewish believer spoke and in your face, biblical salvation message and thousands and thousands of people would run crying to the platform. And we would pray with them. And we saw peoples, there were healings and miracles. It was an amazing time. So that was a perfect time to start. And yes, I mean, you always have some fear and trepidation when you go, but we felt more compelled to go that God would meet us. And he did meet us. We had plenty of hard times when we got there. We had moments of like, “What have we done and what have we done?” But we were there. We were committed.
David (11:25):
It’s so funny. I was thinking about Nick Lesmeister, former director of the Center for Israel. You’ve seen him on the podcast. He has reminded us that we’re all here because Bonnie’s Greek class was too full. That’s really why we’re all here. We can all trace … That’s the butterfly effect. We’re all here because Bonnie’s Greek class.
Bonnie (11:44):
You know what? I didn’t know he said that, but that’s so funny. Yeah.
David (11:48):
That’s
Bonnie (11:49):
So funny.
David (11:50):
So you are an author, a poet, very artistic, and in this book, A Roadmap to Joy, you write, but I think from my understanding, it wasn’t just you wrote, but you went back to the old poems that you wrote, many of them during this time in the former Soviet Union. And this book is not just the poems, but explaining what the poems meant and where you were when you were writing them and how all of it leads back to joy. So I’d love to talk about joy because I’ve been confused by what joy is. I think a lot of Christians are confused because we combine it or confuse it with happiness. So I’d love to just start and please start wherever you want, if there’s a poem you want to read to start, or if you want to kind of help ground us in this theological understanding of joy, because it’s crucial for us to have joy as believers.
(12:54):
That should be the fruit of our life, but we are the most depressed, isolated, anxious, ridden people, that’s the opposite of joy. So we have to get back to joy. And that’s why I love the title of Roadmap to Joy, because that’s what we’re all trying to find, is
Bonnie (13:10):
Joy
David (13:10):
And peace.
Bonnie (13:11):
Right. I’ve kept a blog since 2007, and it has been- Bonnie
David (13:20):
Wilkes.com?
Bonnie (13:21):
Bonnie Wilkes.com.
(13:23):
And it has been a diary of my life. And I don’t know, I was never interested in poetry when I was being educated, but one day I came across a poetry book and every word spoke to me. And I realized the beauty of poetry where it’s like painting where three strokes, a really good artist can paint like a flower. And that’s the same with poetry. You can write three words and you can get a full paragraph if you’re really good, if you choose the right words. I mean, poetry is really perfect words in perfect order and the fewest words. So I had a hunger for this and so I began to write in poetry and I also told the stories along with it. So for years and years, I wanted to gather these stories and make a book and I just couldn’t find a pathway to do it.
(14:29):
And actually now I’m in my 70s and I said, “Lord, I have to get all of this together to honor you just to show the way that you’ve led us through the nations.” And I didn’t set out to write a book about joy at all, but when I gathered everything, every story, the end of it led to joy, every story. So in understanding joy, it’s been a revelation for me too. And I think that there definitely, I know that there is a joy that the world does not understand. And I really think that God plants seeds so that we can see this kind of supernatural joy and we grab onto it. And then as we grab onto it, it’s unfolding and we realize that it was always there. It was beneath our feet. It was beside us. It was before us. It was behind us like the presence of God.
(15:36):
He is joy. It’s always there. It’s always available, but joy is connected to something and this is very crucial to understand. I think it’s important, I would even suggest this for you and your wife sometime when you have a conversation together about joy, is remember your very first moment of joy, your very first moment. There’s a spark where you realize joy is not temporary. There’s some kind of joy in life. For me, I was under five years old, sitting under a Christmas tree, which my parents had just decorated and I was looking at the lights and I saw my father’s eyes and I was happy. That was joy for me. Those lights and Christmas, I didn’t even understand salvation or Jesus or anything, but I saw a light of joy in my father’s eyes and it was real joy because he was a believer and he was sharing Christmas with his children and we were sitting by the tree and I thought he has a joy that I don’t know.
(16:44):
I saw the light of joy in his eyes and it made me hunger for something. And so that first spark of joy, God allows it. Now sometimes it comes through the beauty of nature or different experiences. And then of course the enemy comes in, he floods you with bad things that happen so that you forget that spark of joy. So in the beginning, there’s that spark of joy that drives you to God. The next one is that hopefully you’ll be introduced to the gospel and the gospel says it is with joy that we draw salvation out of the wells of salvation. So that’s our second opportunity at understanding eternal joy. And then joy is found over and over.
(17:35):
So joy is our first joy is linked to some experience that awakens our heart. Our second joy is through the wells of salvation. And then our next joys come through gifts that God gives us, that offers to us. It is a fruit of the spirit and we can ask for it to grow, which I asked. I asked God, I said, “I want joy. I want joy in my life.” When I started reading this book, help me understand what it is, help me taste it. And he did lead me down joyful paths. Then there is the joy of community and there is a joy that comes when we surrender. So a lot of my book is about those, the joy that I discovered through surrender to God’s will when things get tough, to obeying hard things, obeying his word when I maybe want to choose another way or staying faithful in community.
(18:42):
So I think when we fulfill those things, that is how we find joy. That is the pathway to joy.
David (18:49):
Yeah. When I read joy in scripture and in your book, you obviously have so many scriptures. There’s two connections I see. Joy is connected with his presence. And then the hard one for me is that joy is often connected with suffering.
(19:09):
So I mean, your book opens with the hospital, going to the hospital and there’s this cancer diagnosis, the surgery, you’re not waking up happy, but there’s a joy. So what is joy’s relationship with suffering? Is there joy without suffering? Can it exist without suffering? Does suffering just, does it bring out joy? Is it when we’re most aware of joy? What is the relationship with suffering? Because it’s so clearly often linked in scripture because the joy set before him, he endured the cross. I don’t think of the crucifixion as this happy place. It’s the worst place, but yet it was because of the joy set before him. He was able to endure it. So what’s that relationship like?
Bonnie (19:53):
Most people who know the Lord or don’t know the Lord link joy with happiness or achievement and it’s fleeting. And when you live long enough, you see how very fleeting it is. I think of the achievements that I’ve had in my life, like say education, graduating from school and going on to the next thing, or being successful in a job, in a career, even writing a book, those things are so fleeting. They bring you high for a little bit and then it’s over. It’s
David (20:38):
Like ecclesiastes. Right.
Bonnie (20:40):
It’s
David (20:40):
All vapor.
Bonnie (20:41):
It just comes and goes. It’s all vapor. It’s all vapor.
(20:44):
Yeah. But when you see, when eternal joy, it doesn’t matter what the outcome is of suffering. And you really can’t taste that until you get there, until your husband’s in the hospital and he has cancer and you don’t know if it’s spread through his body. You don’t know what the doctor’s going to come and say. Or even my daughter had cancer at 35. This was like the scariest moment of my life waiting. We waited five hours for her surgery to be over and we didn’t know what the doctor would say. There’s this kind of deep down knowing that God’s got you, that God is good and believing that he’s good. And even when you, like you might have a shadow come over you that will say, “God isn’t good. Look what he did. He’s failed you right now. He’s left you right now.” But yet there is this down deep joy and it’s there available.
(21:54):
You have to latch onto it. And the way you latch onto it is expressing his goodness. That’s how you latch onto it. Going over, revisiting his goodness by expressing gratitude. So those were stepping stones for me. I was just expressing it and warring, warring against in prayer against the darkness and continuing to go forward. So those were kind of the stepping stones to grabbing real eternal joy. And you don’t feel, you don’t necessarily feel it. It’s just something that’s in your gut that you know, you’re going to get up tomorrow and you’re going to make the right choices again and again and again.
David (22:41):
Yeah. I saw you in the book draw really close parallel with joy being obedience and joy being his presence. So it’s not like you’re saying this emotion that you necessarily feel, but would you say obedience is the path to get to joy? Is joy, obviously, the fruit of the spirit.
Bonnie (23:07):
I would say obedience is a pathway to joy. Okay. I think gratefulness is too. Yeah, that’s the other one. Gratitude. Exuberantly expressing gratitude. I know I write a story about when I was turning 40, I said, “Lord, I’m having a nervous breakdown. I’m having a midlife crisis.” And the Lord said, “You’re ungrateful.”
David (23:31):
Wow.
Bonnie (23:31):
Just flat out. I love that he talks to me like that.
David (23:34):
Yeah, that’s helpful.
Bonnie (23:36):
And you know what? It changed me around because I began to verbally express gratitude for everything. I wrote letters to people that I had invested in my life. You can’t imagine the joy that flooded my soul. And people wrote back and said, “Thank you. No one ever did this. Thank you. This changed my life.” So gratitude is a very important stepping stone on the pathway to joy.
David (24:01):
When I feel like I’ve heard these studies done even by psychologists or neuroscientists that talk about if you meditate on, whether they use the term meditate or not on negative things, then your body could literally become sick and make you depressed. But if you do it with gratitude, like the endorphins actually go through you. So there is this chemical reaction as well.
Bonnie (24:26):
Right. And I think joy is the result
David (24:29):
Of
Bonnie (24:29):
That fruit.
David (24:31):
Could you read maybe a poem or two that stick out to you as far as maybe a hard season, a dark season, a doubting season where God was able to show you the path to joy and you were able to kind of have that fruit even in the midst of a circumstance that maybe wasn’t happy?
Bonnie (24:53):
Well, I’ll read, just to start off, the book opens with a poem that I especially love about joy. The light of joy. Happiness is joy’s counterfeit and sorrow, it’s truest test. When you finally perceive down deep the price and the prize of redemption, you are free to bend life’s bruises and victories into the shape of overcoming everlasting joy. Verbal sacrificial praise releases a fountain gate to an ocean of exuberance available to all those that bound beyond the limitations of simple gratefulness that have plunged into the amnesiac depths of cleansing blood and just can’t stop saying, “Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
David (25:55):
” Wow.
Bonnie (25:56):
So that’s how the book opens. And I think that honestly, I said everything in one poem, almost, but gratitude is definitely very, very, very important.
David (26:09):
Yeah. It reminds me of a story with Corey Timboon when she was in some kind of prison with her sister, I believe, and they were put in a cell with all these terrible fleas. I believe it was fleas and her sister said- Bedbugs. It was a bedbugs. Yeah. And it was like, “We need to thank God for all things,” is what scripture says. “Let’s thank God for the bed. Let’s thank God for the walls. Let’s thank God for the window that we have. “And then she was like, ” Let’s thank God for the bedbugs or the fleet, whatever it was. “And she was like, ” I’m not doing that. I can’t think. There might be some benefit to these things. There’s no thankfulness I can have for the bedbugs. “And so they said,” Thank you. “And she pushed through and said thank you. And they were having these Bible meetings where they’d bring other inmates or people that were locked up.
(27:09):
I think many were Jews and sympathizers to the Jewish people and they’d have these Bible studies. And then later when she got out and she asked,” Why did you let us have these Bible studies? “The soldiers responded,” No one ever wanted to go in that room because all of the bedbugs, all of the fleas. “So it was the thing that was actually allowing them to have this community was the thing that they didn’t want to thank God for.
Bonnie (27:33):
Right, right. I remember that story.
David (27:37):
As you were reading that poem, that’s why I was reminded of thanking God for things, even if in the current situation, we don’t look at it as a blessing.
Bonnie (27:45):
Right, exactly. I don’t want to take time to read it because it is a story, but I believe that it is the second chapter. It is about our very first month in the former Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union in those days was a hundred years behind the United States, if you can imagine. And we were without heat and electricity often. So my daughter and I were in the kitchen. Wayne was with the students teaching and I was homeschooling my daughter and trying to fix breakfast for her and the heat was out and the electricity went out on the stove and there was a raw egg sitting there staring me in the face. Gosh. My daughter was eight years old and she was all bundled up trying to write her lessons. And I said,” Honey, I’m so sorry. We’re going to have to find something else to eat, maybe cold cereal.
(28:48):
She really wanted an egg. “I said,” The egg is raw. I’m sorry. We can’t cook it. “And she stood up from the table and she said,” Mama, mama, it makes me cry. I feel like I’m losing my life. “And I went over, I put my arms around her and I said,” I feel like I’m losing my life too because our lives were so different. We were pampered Americans that had everything we ever wanted and we were suffering physically. So I told her and I wouldn’t trade that memory or that experience for anything because it had made her who she is today. And I said, “I’m losing my life too.” When we offer our lives as service to Christ, for those who haven’t heard or don’t know him like us, we do lose our lives. Something dies in us so that something can live in someone else.
(29:47):
And she remembered that and she and I both cried together and we asked for strength and she became really, I would say, joyful After that, she embraced it. And when she understood that life was hard and she found friends and God blessed her in so many ways. And so that was one of our first experiences of joy. We felt the Lord fill our hearts with joy after we cried and complained about the suffering and asked God to help us in the suffering.
David (30:24):
Yeah. Man, that’s so good. When you quote C.S. Lewis, which you quote a lot, and I know when I was reading it, I’m a big C.S. Lewis fan as well. And his wife was named Joy.
Bonnie (30:37):
Joy, I know.
David (30:38):
And then she passed away very suddenly. I think he was only married a few years. And then he went through, he wrote his book, A Grief Observed. He talks about joy being … That maybe all pleasures are the counterfeit of joy.
Bonnie (30:55):
Yeah. I loved that quote. Yeah.
David (30:58):
And I read it in your book and that’s why I was reminded of it. What do you believe are the counterfeits and are they wrong or are they just not the full depth of joy?
Bonnie (31:13):
Well, I think each culture, as I traveled, sort of has their own weakness, things that they seek instead of God. An American, I think that we are materialistic, but I don’t think that it’s our worst thing that we seek. I think we’re isolationists. People live in beautiful big houses, and maybe there’s two people or three or four people living in these huge houses, and they’re hold up in there watching TV and seeking every pleasure. Or then they get in a jet and they take planes to exotic places or however you want to fill that hole that’s meant for the joy that comes from salvation. And so I think that that is our great sin, materialism, isolationism.
David (32:12):
Yeah.
(32:13):
So if someone’s watching this and maybe finding themselves in a hard season, in a bedbug flea season, in a no heat, no electricity season, and they just feel like everything’s going wrong, what would your recommendation be? Obviously, be grateful. We could list out reasons why we’re grateful, but what did you find, and maybe there’s a poem connected or maybe a story, but what did you find was the most helpful, practical thing that you did to maintain joy in every season? Was it writing? Was it … You obviously have a gift of being an artist, poetry. Do we all have some elements, some gift that we can find joy in? Or is it writing down, being
Bonnie (33:07):
Grateful? Well, I think … And I am a writer, but you don’t have to be a writer to journal. I think journaling is very cathartic. Write down … And I did, I wrote down everything. I wrote down negative thoughts. I wrote down anger, times when I was mad at God. I wrote down, long lists of gratitude, which also helped me. So I think that those things help us get in touch with our pain. But what I also want to say, first of all, that if you’re suffering, if a person is suffering, and there is so much injustice, and I have a lot of poems about injustice too, because I am a strong justice advocate, and I’m so incensed at injustice.
(34:07):
First of all, God never delegitimizes our pain. Never. Never. He wants to hear it. And so speak to God about it. Pour it out. And when you pour that out and then seek him for answers, seek him first. I love the wristbands that have been given out. Pray first. Pray first. Tell him, express your pain. And in the middle of that, and then go on. As the scripture says, be anxious for nothing, but let your prayers be made known to God with thanksgiving and he meets you with peace. So I think all of those things take us to a road of joy. And we find joy in different ways too. It’s not always that bubbling over. It’s just that deep knowing that you can go on and that God is good. The knowing that God is good through it.
David (35:15):
I have one more question and then I know we have to wrap up and I’ll let you finish with whatever story or poem or encouragement you want to leave us with. But a confusion that I’ve always had is the difference between joy and peace. Because it seems as if they’re both fruit, they’re fruit of the Holy Spirit. Like joy, peace is not an absence of chaos around us. You can have a peace that surpasses understanding, that surpasses the circumstance. So what is the relationship with peace and joy? Are they fraternal twins? Are they two completely different things? Is there some kind of merge? Because I feel like joy and peace probably are the two things that are most appealing to the world. I’m just thinking of a podcast we had with Nate Buzz and he was saying every social media influencer, movie producer, commercial is trying to give you happiness because they can’t give you peace.
(36:24):
So we’re seeking it, but it’s elusive. We can’t find it. So what is that relationship like?
Bonnie (36:35):
I’ve kind of thought that myself, and I can’t say that I really have the answer to it. I’ve asked myself, what is the difference between peace and joy? Because they are very similar in that peace is deep and abiding. It’s assurance, maybe. It’s a deep assurance that God is in control. And I think joy is something that lifts you as an eagle to soar over the chaos. So I would say peace is what roots me to know that God is in control and joy is what lifts me up to kind of soar and see the chaos and know that I can fly above it. So I would say that’s how I would differentiate them.
David (37:32):
That was a very poetic way of differentiating them. I love that. I see you flipping through your book and I know we talked before about you wanting to honor your mom and that you didn’t always have the greatest relationship
Bonnie (37:46):
With
David (37:46):
Her maybe in certain seasons, but yet you can still look back at that relationship now. She’s in her 90s.
Bonnie (37:55):
I can say that my relationship with her now is extremely joyful and it didn’t used to be. Well,
David (38:03):
That would be really encouraging because I’m sure there’s
Bonnie (38:05):
People listening. And I know that people have conflict, parental conflict, which actually ruins the image of God. Father and mother conflict ruins the image of God forever. And Satan wants it to be that way. So this is kind of like, I wrote this in reflection of the kind of Christian mother she was to me and I was too young to appreciate it.
(38:30):
Okay. You sobered your soul. During the fat of summer, your thin hands embraced the razor cold of winter. You rejected lethargy in that joyful day of ease. You sobered your soul to tailor family hats, mittens, and coats. I watched you dip them in blood and soak them in tears. You gathered oil and wheat and wine and dug a cave for eternity in the fragile, volatile state of abundance. When others played in the shallow light of summer, you sobered your soul. At the first drop of rain, we hunkered down in that dark cellar of faith. You smiled. When the wind blew the candles out and the old rickety wooden table jiggled as you wrote our lessons in the light of eternity. You made sure our feet did not slip. You squeezed color from vegetables and painted a canvas of possibility. And when we ate the last bite of soup, I saw you bow your knee to one who is greater.
(39:54):
“You ward for my life. You freed my feet and hands to jump over a wall with ease, to stop an enemy in his tracks, to tie the shoe of a child, to recognize a thirsty soul, and to understand when a silver world turns to tarnish. You taught me how to cope with clay feet and golden dreams. When you took away my measuring, Rod, for this, you are wise and good. For this, I call you mother.
David (40:33):
“It’s beautiful. I think that kind of circles back to just this idea that you can look back and find something to be grateful for, even if there was hard rocky seasons.
Bonnie (40:47):
Yes, exactly. Exactly.
David (40:50):
Well, as we close, will you just pray for us, pray for our listeners who are maybe trying to wrestle through this season of life that they’re in, and maybe they need a mother, a spiritual mother’s prayers to just help them find the peace that roots them and the joy that can lift them.
Bonnie (41:10):
Yes, absolutely.
(41:13):
Dear Lord, I sort of feel like C.S. Lewis as being surprised by joy in this time of my life, that in gathering all the stories that have been written, that you’ve walked, you’ve watched and walked with our family through, Father, that I discovered that the ending, the pathway actually led us to joy. I didn’t expect it. Father, joy seems so not attainable. It seems ethereal sometimes, Father, but I know that there is a deep joy. I believe that people are hungrying for joy. They’re hungrying for eternal things. They’re hungering for God things that take them far beyond our earthly values. And as C.S. Lewis says,” Instead, we fill our lives with pleasure, Lord Jesus, or materialism, or we isolate ourselves seeking to find that inner inner joy and that joy upon our pathway. “I pray for all those now who are seeking, who are wanting to know you.
(42:29):
I pray that you would reveal yourself in the most beautiful way, that you are capable of giving these things that we have discussed, that joy comes through salvation, that joy comes through obedience, and it comes through sacrifice, that joy is also given a gift as a gift, a salvation, and that you are trying to get our attention through the joy that is in creation or the memories, the wonderful memories that we have with family and friends. All of that is trying to lead us to the pathway of joy, to the pathway of knowing you more fully. Lord, I just thank you so much and I pray that you would reveal yourself in the name of Jesus and I glorify your name. Amen.
David (43:15):
Amen. Thank you for being here and
Bonnie (43:19):
Sharing with us. Thank you. That was awesome.
David (43:21):
These amazing books can be found wherever books are sold, Barnes & Noble, at Amazon, right,
Bonnie (43:27):
Too? At Amazon, yes. And
David (43:28):
I have an autograph copy, so you’re not getting mine,
Bonnie (43:31):
But
David (43:31):
If you want to get an autograph copy, maybe come to our Shabbat services. I think you’ll be-
Bonnie (43:37):
Yeah, there will be actually a book signing on April 10th. Beautiful. After the Shabbat service.
David (43:44):
So that’s for you if you want to get an autograph copy like myself. But that’s all we have for today. We’ll see you next time on the Covenant Conflict Podcast. Have a great day.