Joy

I've been thinking a lot about joy lately. During Daryl's first year of seminary he took a class taught by Ellen Charry on the theology of happiness. The course title brought smiles from a lot of people when it was mentioned, yet the course proved to be really rich and full.

During my time as a teaching assistant I spend many hours teaching seminary students how to read the Psalms aloud. There is such joy in the Psalms, and such honesty. I love that many of them turn from dark lament to the fullness of joy in only a verse or two. I love that they teach us that there is no emotion that is unacceptable to God, and that we can be honest before God in our pain, our frustration, our anger, and our joy.

Sometimes it takes students a long time before they're willing to read the Psalms with any emotion. They read "Praise the Lord in his sanctuary" the same as "I wish you would crush my enemies underfoot," quietly and blandly. Yet the Psalms are one important place in the Bible where we can put ourselves into the Psalmist's poetry. When have we wanted to praise? What does our joy sound like?

C. S. Lewis called joy a "very serious business," and I'll admit it's not always my deepest emotion. I can be quick to complain unless everything is going well.

I've had a nasty cold since last Friday, which makes me even quicker to complain. Yet yesterday was a great day, despite my cold. I gave a class presentation that (I think) went really well, I had some great classes, and at the end of the day, my friend Brandi brought over a warm loaf of gluten-free bread that she baked to help me feel better. My day was full of joy, yet my body was achy and sick. The incongruousness of my physical feeling with my emotional high made me stop and think. So often how much joy I feel is dependent upon external factors all working out for the best. Yet, I felt awful, but I felt good. Maybe this is what joy really is. Not external happiness because all is well, but a deep and abiding sense that God is God and we are loved and, as Julian of Norwich is famous for saying, "All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well." In this, there is joy.

My course on the interpretation of Job is coming to an end, and during today's lecture the professor was asked if there is any hint of a "happy ending" at the end of Job's difficult and dramatic book. He responded simply, "At the end there is no longer a simplistic faith, but a simple affirmation of God." After all Job has been through he has no easy answers, and God doesn't give him any easy ones. Yet God is God, and Job is able to rest after he learns this. Even Job finds a hint of joy.

For more ponderings on joy, here's a great editorial from Christianity Today.

I especially love their conclusion that "We do well to recall how the incarnate God began his ministry among us. He never relented from the message that, though life comes only by way of death, life really is the point." Discipline is important. Obedience is vital. Turning from sin can't be forgotten. But life is really the point. That's why the Gospel is good news.

Amen. And Merry Christmas.

 (Images borrowed from here and here.)