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.