JOY…

…is a hard thing to find.  It has never been my strong suit.  I am not alone, I think, in this.  I found comfort in preparation for the sermon (that did not happen) in discovering that dissatisfaction and longing are part of the struggle to find joy. 

I ran into good company.  They were not shoppers going for the latest consumer goods.  Nor were they company at holiday parties with family and friends.  I found instead lost and honest seekers sharing their struggles and leaving a trail, bits of their confessions on the ground for other lost pilgrims to find.

I found Augustine searching through theft, sex, and inebriation in search of what he thought was joy.  What he found really was only the struggle.

I was joined by C.S. Lewis, who said that his earthly desires continued long after he practiced what he thought would satisfy them.  Neither company, nor intellect, nor revelry were found to quench the desire that was deeper than all these things.

Thomas A Kempis admonished me to have my conscience clear.  The clearer the conscience, the greater the possibility of the life of joy, he taught.

I strained.  I cataloged thoughts.  I tried to imagine experiences past that stained my mind with the permanence of joy.  I could remember only a few.

Joy calls and as we look around this earth it can not be found.  We can find anesthetics that numb our desire for it, happy fun times (isn’t that a Japanese show?) that make us forget the absence of it, and a tired façade we use to try to convince ourselves and others that we don’t need it.  But “it” is ever calling – out of sight, out reach, never out of mind.

Lewis wrote, “all images and sensations, if idolatrously mistaken for Joy itself, soon confessed themselves inadequate. . . . Inexorably Joy proclaimed, ‘You want—I myself am your want of—something other, outside, not you or any state of you.”  In Mere Christianity he would find clear thoughts on this riddle of joy and write, “ If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

The great quote from Augustine’s confessions tells us his truth, and our truth, that “The heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”  He was busy with academic success, torn with a seemingly insurmountable bondage to his flesh and it’s desires, when he heard the pure voice of children singing, “Take and read.”   He hurried to find a copy of Paul’s letters.  He opened the Bible and his eyes fell to Romans 13.14-15.  ‘Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, in concupiscence.’   Augustine exclaimed then with joy, “No further would I read; nor needed I: for instantly at the end of this sentence, by a light as it were of serenity infused into my heart, all the darkness of doubt vanished away.”

We need advent. We need the joy that the glitter of commercialism, the ordered ritual of ornaments and trees, and endless social obligations will never meet. We need Christ.  We need to face and embrace, with fear finally vanished, that Christ came for us.  God loves us.  He planned to save us.  The Father has not forgotten.

We need to face advent today and embrace that God’s love does not mean I simply get divine ego strokes and deified affirmations.  We are loved and loved forward.  God has purposes for me to embrace.  He calls us to find joy in His calling. The imitation of Christ calls us to joy.

We need to face the advent of Immanuel, God with us.  We need to face the Body of Christ, the people who stand, sing, and weep along with us on this pilgrim road.  Find joy in knowing the body.  We need not lick our wounds alone any longer.  We need to stop the bitter railings in our minds as we accuse others as the source of our misery.  Hermitages of pity, rage, and bitterness give way to a celebration of Christ…in us.

My moments of joy are not unlike those of my companions.  They are not the imitations of intimacy that I mistook for joy.  They are not the faux bliss that yielded only pain and complication.  They are the moments when I stop looking for things on this level and realize only the transcendent satisfies. 

One such moment came on Christmas eve at a Lutheran church.  It was my first Christmas at church in years.  I had stopped going from obligation years ago.  I was sober for the first time in a long time.  I experienced Christ again, the incarnation again.  I had joy.  I don’t recall the service, songs, or much of anything except that in a way I probably can’t convey to one who has not had the experience, I knew the joy of God on our side, near to us…the joy of God with us, God in Christ…advent.

I will close this journey with the words of Isaac Watts.  He wrote my favorite Christmas song (with God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas close on the rail…

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven and nature sing,
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as,
far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.