a word about joy

I recently received as a gift the book Desiring God, by John Piper. I have been reading a chapter each morning over a bowl of granola and an apple. This morning I completed a chapter discussing the role of joy in true Christian worship, and I thought the points made were powerful and relevant. Piper begins with the following analogy:

"If I take my wife out for the evening on our anniversary and she asks me, 'Why do you do this?' the answer that honors her most is 'Because nothing makes me happier tonight than to be with you.'
"'It's my duty' is a dishonor to her.
"'It's my joy' is an honor.
"There it is! The feast of Christian Hedonism. How shall we honor God in worship? By saying, 'It's my duty'? Or by saying, 'It's my joy'?"

Most Christians today, Piper argues, have traded a sense of joy and childlike wonder for a sense of religious duty. He urges them to delight themselves in the Lord, rediscovering the supreme happiness that can and should be derived from true worship. In discussing the modern understanding of joy, Piper presents a well-known quote from C.S. Lewis' "The Weight of Glory."

"If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased."

"That's it!", Piper continues, "The enemy of worship is not that our desire for pleasure is too strong, but too weak! We have settled for a home, a family, a few friends, a job, a television, a microwave oven, an occasional night out, a yearly vacation, and perhaps a new personal computer. We have accustomed ourselves to such meager, short-lived pleasures that our capacity for joy has shriveled. And so our worship has shriveled. Many can scarcely imagine what is meant by 'a holiday at the sea'--worshiping the living God!"

Jeremiah 2:11-13 addresses this same problem: "My people have changed their glory for that which does not profit. Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

Perhaps another of Piper's analogies will speak more to you: "The irony of our human condition is that God has put us within sight of the Himalayas of His glory in Jesus Christ, but we have chosen to pull down the shades of our chalet and show slides of Buck Hill--even in church.

"You have capacities for joy that you can scarcely imagine. They were made for the enjoyment of God," that is, for true worship.

snapshot of the day:

Can I just say that I love where I live?

A friend and I had the good fortune to stumble across this pair while driving (thankfully not while hiking), so we could safely sit and just watch them for a while. The lil' guy was obviously having some trouble with his long spindly legs, and wobbled and hopped and fell over while his mum was trying to coax him off the road. We, of course, were in no hurry, and savored our time crossing paths with the family.

a matter of perspective

I am sure you have seen this image before. It is known as the necker cube, an optical illusion in which the orientation of the cube seems to switch before your eyes. As you focus on the shape, you can't quite be sure which side is nearest you. Is the blue side in the back of the transparent cube, or in the front? You aren't exactly certain which perspective is real, and which is imagined.

The area of geometry is not the only one where perspective is both important and rather ambiguous. A little while ago I attended the last Sunday night devotional of the spring semester, and I left that night with something that has echoed continually in my mind for more than two weeks and has inspired self-examination after self-examination.

"You do not have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."
-C.S. Lewis

"We are not physical beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a physical experience."
-Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Stop and think about those quotes for a minute. Reread them, if you need to.

If these statements are true, than most Christians, myself included, have woefully diminished the power of their faith. Instead of letting our relationship with God engulf every aspect of our lives, we have confined our relationship with God to a mere aspect of our lives. I am afraid this manifests itself in every imaginable way. Do you snap at your husband or sister or mother because they have violated your right to a comfortable moment in life? Or do you serve your husband or sister or mother because this life is a perfect opportunity to mold your eternal soul into something more like Christ? In choosing a close friend or a girlfriend or boyfriend--do you select someone who would make your life more fun, who would provide you with wealth or emotional security, or do you choose someone whose soul has the same focus as yours? This matter of perspective, one that I wish I had learned long ago, makes all the difference in the world.

Today I read C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed. In his characteristic use of startlingly excellent metaphors, Lewis compares his wife to a sword. After her death, he remarks, "'She is in God's hand.' That gains a new energy when I think of her as a sword. Perhaps the earthly life I shared with her was only a part of the tempering. Now perhaps He grasps the hilt; weighs the new weapon; makes lightnings with it in the air. 'A right Jerusalem blade.'"

If this earthly life is truly a tempering of our souls, then every experience will make its mark on our swordly soul. If we forget that this life is merely a tempering process, if we get caught up in this world and forget that our ultimate aim is to become a noble sword, the end result can be neither useful nor beautiful. This tempering--though undeniably important--is not all there is. This physical life is not all there is. It is merely a phase in the life of the eternal soul. How tragic it would be to live this life without serious attention to our souls, and in the end offer to Christ only a woefully ruined sword.