Joy to the World!

We are told it is the season of joy.

One of our assistant pastors gave the message this week and it was on joy. It was a good message and the general theme was that God wants us to have the gift of joy.

However, his message and almost every message I have ever heard on joy always leaves out one important component - what is joy?

His message and others inadvertantly seem to imply that joy is the same thing as happiness and/or pleasure - God wants us to be happy.

I would have assumed this equivalence if I had not read C. S. Lewis' book, "Surprised by Joy." It's basically Lewis' story of how he came to be a Christian. One component of that process was being 'surprised' by joy and understanding how it is different from happiness and pleasure.

Here's a quote from his book.

“I call it Joy. It is itself the memory of a memory. As I stood beside a flowering currant bush on a summer day there suddenly arose in me without warning, and as if from a depth not of years but of centuries, the memory of that earlier morning at the Old House when my brother had brought his toy garden into the nursery. It is difficult or find words strong enough for the sensation which came over me; Milton's 'enormous bliss' of Eden (giving the full, ancient meaning to 'enormous') comes somewhere near it. It was a sensation, of course, of desire; but desire for what?...Before I knew what I desired, the desire itself was gone, the whole glimpse... withdrawn, the world turned commonplace again, or only stirred by a longing for the longing that had just ceased... In a sense the central story of my life is about nothing else... The quality common... is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic, and one only, in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again... I doubt whether anyone who has tasted it would ever, if both were in his power, exchange it for all the pleasures in the world. But then Joy is never in our power and Pleasure often is.”

Happiness and pleasure are results of our circumstances. Circumstances that make us feel good create a sense of happiness and pleasure within us. Change or remove those circumstances and the feeling of happiness and pleasure will cease.

Joy is not a feeling, nor is it dependent on our circumstances. Joy is a desire for something that we long for, something we know is greater and better than anything we experience in our circumstances, something that appears to be only slightly more than a dream vaguely remembered after we awake. Joy is a longing for reality in the midst of the world's unreality. Joy is the longing for the homeland in which we have never lived as we are truly strangers in a strange land. Joy is a longing for the 'enormous bliss' of Eden.

Joy is a gift from God and, as Lewis says above, is never in our power. We can not create it, nor can we create circumstances where it will occur.

When the angels told the shepherds, "I bring you tidings of great joy, for unto you is born this day a Savior," that announcement stirred a longing in their hearts so strong they left their flocks to see the baby that would change their lives, our lives and the whole world.

May the longing of pure joy fill your hearts as we once again celebrate the birth of the Christ child.

 

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