To dress it up, “Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts!” To make it far less formal, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart.” Both teach us that joy is something inside of you before it is something on the outside. It is an internal condition bringing itself to bear upon external realities. The unspeakable joy of just being alive. The joy of release; of being suddenly well when before we were sick, of being forgiven when before we were ashamed and afraid, of finding ourselves loved when we were lost and alone.
The world was desolate, foreboding, yet Isaiah proclaimed a time forward when the desert would be rejuvenated; when the parched land would be glad, when those with palpitating hearts would be strong. He hoped for the day when they would be overtaken by joy and prophesied, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3).
The work of Advent is the shared task of discovering our joy! British mystic, Evelyn Underhill, describes joy “as the first quality of Christian love, the very color of holiness, not a luxury, but a duty of the soul!”
We have audaciously brought light to the candle of joy because “Love comes healing, God revealing. Friends, be joyful and believe! Sins are covered, grace discovered, in our darkness shines the light!” (Brian Wren).
Find joy and gladness by accepting your acceptance. In Christ you are unconditionally loved and nothing, not sickness, or failure, or distress, or oppression, or war, or death, is able to take God’s love from you. Isaiah 35:3-4 speaks of joy in the wilderness where God gives strength to tired hands and knees trembling with weakness; where the discouraged can be strong and unafraid; where those who cannot speak will shout for joy! Listen and be glad! It is a vision where disjointed folk are given back their lives, where failure is inverted by God’s loving acceptance. In this great lyrical doxology, Israel sings of a time when all of creation is joined and the eyes of the blind are opened, and the ears of the deaf are unstopped, and the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy!
Scott Peck did us a favor by beginning his book, The Road Less Traveled, with the simple yet profound thought: Life is difficult. And it is! If we forget this and pretend that it is not, we make it even more difficult. It is not easy to be persons, to be families, to do church. Once at our college reunion, my friend really set me free as we watched a presumed first-year student walk across the campus. Randy said, “If I had ever known that I was that young when I was here, I wouldn’t have been half as hard on myself!”
The people were waiting for a new day when Isaiah prophesies that the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad; the desert shall rejoice and blossom with joy and singing (35:1-2). I wonder if his words prompted them to live with anticipatory joy! We are what we anticipate! Find your joy by accepting, anticipating it!
Find joy and gladness by embracing your pain and suffering. Real joy is discovered by accepting and acknowledging the pain we meet rather than doing whatever we can to avoid pain at all costs. We prefer thinking faith will deliver us from suffering, and we are disappointed when it does not. Paul was persecuted and shipwrecked, yet he soothed his wounds in prison with the surprising words, “Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.”
I am inclined to think there are times you must choose your pain; the pain of avoiding a particular hardship or the pain of accepting your grief. Henri Nouwen shared, “My grief was the place where I found my joy!”
A few weeks ago, I reflected about the painful experience in my twenties of my father’s death only weeks before we moved to Royal Lane. No one had ever told me that you could hurt like that. Somehow, I had gotten the idea that your faith was like a Teflon coating that protected you from such sorrow. Throughout those days, I was learning to accept my grief as my guide and friend in such a devastating loss. In a very tangible way, the youth of Royal Lane became our joy along the path of an extremely difficult journey for Jennifer and Jeff and me. In our grief, we found here, are joy!
I love a poignant song by Carrie Newcomer inspired while watching her friend trying to help her daughter work on a math problem. She was not trying to do it for her but encouraged her by saying, “You Can Do This Hard Thing!” She chose to let her daughter accept the pains involved in learning.
I hope that you will never find yourself in a place where you cannot be surprised by joy. Develop your potential for choosing joy even in suffering. Find streams in the desert. Let the parched ground and burning sand become a pool. When discouragement places you in the wilderness God is there.
Find joy and gladness by discovering your own endless capacity to be nurtured for positive change. Rabbi Abraham Heschel said, “Being human is a surprise, not a foregone conclusion.” Take it as duty every time you are tempted to lock yourself in; every time you are tempted lock someone else in. In Christ we each have a boundless, unpredictable capacity to overcome. Therefore, “Faith is not to be believed, but danced!” Dance because life is unfolding all around us.
Brother Lawrence, whose birth name was Nicholas Herman, was born to peasant parents. He chose to find joy by learning to practice the presence of God. When faced with the challenge of entering a monastery, he was nothing but disappointed that he was assigned to work in the kitchen. This was not at all the preferred position for him. For him it was drawing the short straw. In the hustle and bustle with pots and pans, he was only disappointed. He pined for a loftier position. He wished for high moments of the Spirit’s visitation. He had come to the monastery to devote himself to a life of prayer before God. He could find no joy and was hopeless that he would ever break free from the kitchen. It was then that he discovered God was in the kitchen. He chose to practice the presence of God, the title of the letters and conversations of this 17th century monk.
We do joy because God goes with us!
My favorite word of departure extrapolates this practice of the presence of God:
As we go from this place
remember that God goes with us!
God goes beneath us as foundation,
Behind us as protection.
Beside us as our friend,
Within us as our strength.
In front of us as our guide.
And praise God, God goes above us all as our joy!