Joy as Resistance

May 5, 2026

Joy as a starting point for justice work

Dear Friend,

“Joy is born out of resilience. For Hondurans, it is a form of resistance.”

When I heard Sara Pineda, ASJ-US Communications Coordinator, share this with a packed room at our Grand Rapids Celebration of Stories back in March, I had no idea how badly I needed to hear it. I don’t think I was the only one.

We’ve been through some heavy things the last several years. Increasingly polarized politics, high social mistrust, and a global pandemic to name just a few.

Our partners in Honduras have too. And yet, Sara didn’t spend her talk ruminating or bemoaning this. Instead, her message for us was this: “But we still do not let go of our joy. We hold on to it dearly and insistently find ways to multiply it. Unjust systems want to grind us down but joy won’t let them.”

All of this has me thinking about how often we tend to think about Honduras as a place only of need. Too often, my orientation toward Honduras and its people is one of benevolent giving, and theirs of humble receiving. But Sara helped me see just how much Honduras has to give me too, and how much I needed to receive it.

Pictured: Sara Pineda, ASJ-US Communications Coordinator

For instance, I’ve always assumed that joy is the result, not the cause. The result of life “going right”: fulfillment in my work, a happy family, a boring annual physical. Once I have everything I need and most of what I want, then I can find joy.

But what I’m learning from Sara and the rest of my colleagues in Honduras is that this understanding of joy has it backwards. For them, joy–in their culture, their country, their family, their land–is the starting point.

It was their joy that enabled them to work for the past two years enduring threats and attacks to secure a safe, free, and fair election last November.

It is their joy that sustained them as they fought for seven years for new textbooks for Honduran schoolkids, and to finally see 500,000 copies go out to students across the country in the first four months of 2026.

And it is their joy that gives them the courage to turn their sights to bigger, deeper, more transformative reforms to Honduran society in 2026 and beyond.

When joy is contingent upon external factors, it is fragile. Its roots go only as deep as our present circumstances allow, making it vulnerable to being swept away at the first sign of trouble.

But when joy is our starting point, everything gets flipped on its head. Suddenly, our joy is no longer anchored in the ebb and flow of the 24-hour news cycle or the current contents of our online shopping carts. Instead, our joy is grounded in something deeper–community, belonging, place. When this is the case, it is our joy that fuels our work for justice, not the other way around.

Will you choose to let joy fuel your pursuit of justice by making a gift to ASJ today?

Practice Joyful Resistance

If so, your gift will have double the impact thanks to a generous donor who has agreed to match all spring campaign gifts up to $100,000! Please make a gift today and continue supporting justice in Honduras.

I wonder what would happen if we let ourselves receive Sara’s lesson. What if we looked for joy in the everyday, like a community that knows and cherishes us, land that offers us its good gifts over and over, and a God who desires peace and delights in justice. What if we chose that joy first rather than waiting for life’s circumstances to drop it into our laps?

What if we let this kind of resilient joy fuel our work for justice?

How might it change our work? How might it change the way we work alongside our partners in Honduras? How might it change us?

I have to admit that I’m not very good yet at this kind of joy. But I am learning. Will you join me?

Onward,