In your presence there is fullness of joy. Psalm 16:11 (NIV)
Joy is a Mystery – Finding Joy Series – Part 3
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7
Joy is a liquid. It’s not something you can pursue, really. It finds you in the most unexpected moments. When you don’t think it’s possible to feel joy, she’s there, knocking softly at the door, sitting quietly beside you, stroking your hair as you rest, making dinner in the kitchen…
Joy is hard for us for a whole gamut of reasons.
First, there’s the question of our worthiness… do we deserve it? Do we allow ourselves to savor it? Or do we punish ourselves by showing joy the door before it even has a chance to sit?
Second, apathy sets in. The pursuit of happiness is rarely fulfilling. Not so much because we don’t get what we want, some of us do. But because even when we chase down achievement and things and status, we realize the shallowness of the gladness within them. It doesn’t take long for the shine to wear off and for our passion of the chase to fade. The disappointment in the shallowness of achievement makes some of us check out, going through the motions, living a cardboard kind of life.
Thirdly (although I’m certain there are more reasons we steer away from joy), is grief and tragedy. It almost seems impossible for joy to stand beside these things. How can it be found in pain? And if it is, is that allowed? Should it be? When we are in deep grief, and we feel even a slight breeze of joy, guilt quickly settles in. Isn’t joy meant to be offensive in these times?
But that’s the thing with joy: it has no respect for seasons. It’s a liquid. It leaks in even when all the doors are windows are tightly shut. It finds the holes in the ceiling, the cracks in the walls, and it comes in anyway.
I know, it feels offensive. How can you feel anything like joy when someone you love is going through something unimaginable, or you are yourself? How can you laugh? How can you enjoy anything? Isn’t that a betrayal of the pain?
No. Joy has nothing to do with your circumstances. It doesn’t belong to your situation. It resides apart from that.
Teilhard de Chardin said that “Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”
The Psalmist wrote: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (16:11)
In the Passion Translation, it reads: “For you bring me a continual revelation of resurrection life, the path to the bliss that brings me face-to-face with you.”
Joy is that deep knowing that something truer, beyond our circumstances, is underneath it all and holds us together in its grip: love. There’s greater presence in and through it all. “Bliss brings me face to face with [God].” Being present with God, the divine energy that permeates the entire universe, is joy.
And there’s no greater time to need this bliss, this ultimate presence when pain seems to have taken up residence in your life. It’s right here, at this moment, this tragic, horrific season that you’re in, that joy wants to flow in.
Joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, anytime, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering, with tears in its eyes.
And it's with tears that joy does its most miraculous work.
Go to Part 4 – Give Way to Days of Laughter »
Written by Lizzy
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 1097a 30-34.
- rabbisacks.org/the-pursuit-of-joy-ki-tavo-5775
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