3/04/2015
THE JOY OF THE LORD
GOAFS II: #135
JOY
3.4.15
“Even the things that live in dark caves live within the
sovereignty of God.” Frederick Buechner
February 17,
2015 10.07 A.M.
As I sit down
to write, the world population clock has just ticked off 7,295,605,037. Every one
of these people has a story. The composite of all their stories, and all the
stories that have preceded them is history. Please remember that “history” is
ultimately “His Story.”
This is not
the history we find in history books. History books are usually written by the
winners, and often rewritten by those who think they should have won or are
deluded into believing they really have won. Lest I expand this too far, let’s
just talk about the current 7 billion plus living today.
In 1982
Frederick Buechner published a unique spiritual memoir, The Sacred Journey, in which he reflects on key moments of the
first half of his life, from childhood memories to his decision to enter a
theological seminary. In the introduction to this book he makes an observation
about theology that caught my attention recently and got me thinking. Here is
what he says:
“All theology, like fiction, is at its heart, autobiography,
and that what a theologian is doing essentially is examining as honestly as he
can the rough-and-tumble of his own experience with all its ups and downs, its
mysteries and loose ends, and expressing in logical, abstract terms the truths
about human life and about God that he believes he has found implicit there.
More as a novelist than as a theologian, more concretely than abstractly, I
determined to try to describe my own life as evocatively and candidly as I
could in the hope that such glimmers of theological truth as I believed I had
glimpsed in it would shine through in my description more or less on their own.
It seemed to me then, and seems to me still that if God speaks to us at all in
this world, if God speaks anywhere, it is into our personal lives that he
speaks. Someone we love dies, say. Some unforeseen act of kindness or cruelty
touches the heart or makes the blood run cold. We fail a friend, or a friend
fails us, and we are appalled at the capacity we all of us have for estranging
the very people in our lives we need the most. Or maybe nothing extraordinary
happens at all—just one day following another, helter-skelter, in the manner of
days. We sleep and dream. We wake. We work. We remember and forget. We have fun
and are depressed. And into the thick of it, or out of the thick of it, at
moments even the most humdrum of our days, God speaks.”
I think, if
asked, that Buechner might well suggest the life of every one of these 7
billion is truly a sacred journey and that the travel agent who has carefully
planned it is the Sovereign Creator and Sustainer of all that is, that ever
was, and that ever will be.
This thought
raises an interesting question; does the idea of the sacred journey apply to
both the believer and the pagan, both the saved and the lost? I cannot speak
for Buechner but I believe it does. Take care from this point on, there “be dragons”
as noted on the edges of early maps. From here on there are many possible side
trails, detours, weighty debates, and dead ends that could turn this into a
multi-volume set of very fat books. But I will resist them and continue in the
spirit of Buechner’s paragraph above.
I would
suggest that it is the image of God in all men that makes the sacred journey
possible for all men. The fall of man did not destroy that image, it only
marred it. The first man and woman could think, feel, and will because God is a
thinking, feeling, and willing Creator. God is a Person and he determined to
communicate and have fellowship with the persons He had made and so made them
“in His own image.”
How would
this work in the unbeliever? Because of the image of God, the unbeliever is
accountable to God. (Romans
1.19-20, 2.11.16)
Whatever the unbeliever thinks, feels and wills of that which is true,
honorable, right, pure, lovely, excellent, or worthy of praise points to the
Creator of these things, even in the marred image of God he cannot escape.
Consider Sylvia Plath.
Sylvia Plath; (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet,
novelist, and short-story writer. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at
Smith
College and Newenham College at the University
of Cambridge, before receiving
acclaim as a poet and writer. She married fellow poet Ted Hughes in 1956; they lived together in the
United States and then England, and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas. Plath suffered from depression for much
of her adult life and in 1963 she committed suicide. Controversy continues to
surround the events of her life and death, as well as her writing and legacy.
(Wikipedia)
Plath’s poem below has
all the marks of a Word from eternity touching her in time. It is as example, I believe, of one
definition of doxa, glory, defined as
“the sparks that fly when the infinite weight of eternity bumps up against the
fragile web of time.” The highlighting
in her poem is mine.
Black Rook in Rainy Weather
On the stiff twig up there
Hunches a wet black rook
Arranging
and rearranging its feathers in the rain-
I do not
expect a miracle
Or an
accident
To set the sight on fire
In my
eye, nor seek
Any more
in the desultory weather some design,
But let
spotted leaves fall as they fall
Without
ceremony, or portent.
Although,
I admit, I desire,
Occasionally, some backtalk
From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain:
A certain
minor light may still
Lean incandescent
Out of
kitchen table or chair
As if a celestial burning took
Possession of the most obtuse objects now and
then --
Thus hallowing an interval
Otherwise
inconsequent
By
bestowing largesse, honor
One might
say love. At any
rate, I now walk
Wary (for
it could happen
Even in
this dull, ruinous landscape); skeptical
Yet
politic, ignorant
Of whatever angel any choose to
flare
Suddenly at my elbow. I
only know that a rook
Ordering
its black feathers can so shine
As to seize my senses, haul
My eyelids up, and grant
A brief respite from fear
Of total neutrality. With
luck,
Trekking
stubborn through this season
Of
fatigue, I shall
Patch together a content
Of sorts.
Miracles occur.
If you
care to call those spasmodic
Tricks of
radiance
Miracles.
The wait's begun again,
The long wait for the angel,
For that rare, random descent.
I think
Plath could see, think and write this way because the image of God was only
marred and not destroyed in the fall of man. She edges all the way up to love but will not permit
herself the next step—God.
When it
comes to considering the Sacred Journey and the image of God in man in the life
of believers, I think that “the joy of the Lord” is the place to start.
Joy is a big
word and it too would take a book or many books to discuss. Just consider these
words of God given through the Psalmist:
This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Psalm 118.24
For many
years these are the first words my wife has heard from me each morning. To
“rejoice’’ is “to feel joy or great delight.” Joy is “the emotion evoked by
well-being, success, etc.” Notice the simplest dictionary definition calls joy
“a feeling,” and a “emotion evoked.”
My childbride
and longtime best friend sometimes has the tendency to see the glass half empty
rather than half full. I pray for her in the evening that she will sleep well,
have sweet dreams, songs in the night and joy in the morning. It is only fair
that she sometimes asks “How do I get the joy of the Lord?”
I am sure
there are many books written that try to answer this question. I have not read
any of them. I did read C.S. Lewis’ book Surprised
By Joy and I remember little of it but the title. Yet the title has stuck
with me. My answer to the question, “how do I get the joy of the Lord?” is
primarily from the Scriptures and long familiarity with them. It consists of
two parts: an observation about the nature of Joy, and a theory about the
mechanism of Joy.
The Observation: The joy of the Lord
is a by-product of an activity in which the pursuer’s goal is not joy but some
other worthy objective. Setting out on a specific quest for the joy of the Lord is a little like
snipe hunting where the practical jokers send the novice hunter out and he
comes back empty-handed. He says “I almost saw several of them but couldn’t get
a good shot.” They explain to him that the bird in question can only be seen
out of the corner of the eye. When you look at him directly, he disappears.
There are many examples in Scripture of someone or some ones obeying God and
being surprised by joy. I will mention just one.
In Nehemiah 8
is the record of what happened in Jerusalem when the broken down wall was
completed:
· The whole nation took an offering
· Ezra read the Book of the Law aloud to
all old enough to understand
· The readings were explained
· They wept and mourned and then were
told to rejoice
· They went home and had a huge party,
not forgetting the poor
· They went on in the joy of the Lord,
rejoicing.
There is a
common thread that runs through the examples we find--there is always an
element of obedience to the Lord involved. Thomas a Kempis in Little Garden of Roses, speaking of the
seeker of the wisdom that Christ taught says he “enjoys an good reputation and
has a clear conscience; he avoids worries, experiences peace, and God
frequently grants him such joy of heart as the world has never known or
enjoyed…every joy that does not have God as its author quickly dissipates; and
also stains and is harmful.”
Some things I
think I know:
· God is the author of joy.
· Joy is an emotion, a feeling, that
arises from the heart within, not from an act of the will. I can love my wife
as an act of my will if necessary. I cannot conjure up true joy as an act of my
will.
· Joy is a by-product of some action not
primarily intended to produce it, usually an action of obedience to God.
· Joy may be expressed in words or may
even be “unspeakable” or “inexpressible.” (1 Peter 1.8)
The Theory: the evocation of joy in the heart is
related to the fact that God has made man “in His own image. This means
that man thinks, feels, and wills because God thinks, feels and wills—man
finitely, God infinitely. It is this that enables God and man to have
fellowship and communion. It is out of this communion that true joy arises. I
believe that it is the recognition of the intersection of God’s image and that
answering image of God in a man that evokes joy in the heart.
It is this
shared image also that enables even unredeemed men to know “the work of the law
written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts
alternately accusing them or else defending them. Wherever the unredeemed
artist touches beauty, truth, or love, a bell rings deep in his heart,
reminding him of the one true God who is beauty, truth and love.
Where does
this leave us? Let me try to summarize with what we might call the first three
steps on the daily Sacred Journey.
First Step Philippians 4.8
..brothers, whatever is
true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is
anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Second Step Exodus 20.2-3
2 “I am the Lord your God,
who rescued you from the land of Egypt, the place of your slavery.
3 “You must not have any
other god but me.
4 “You must not make for
yourself an idol of any kind or an image of anything in the heavens or on the
earth or in the sea. 5 You must not bow down to
them or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God who will not
tolerate your affection for any other gods. I lay the sins of the parents upon
their children; the entire family is affected—even children in the third and
fourth generations of those who reject me. 6 But I lavish unfailing love for a thousand generations on
those who love me and obey my commands.
Matthew 22.36-40
36 “Teacher, which is the
great commandment in the Law?” 37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
Third Step John 14.15
15 “If you love me, you
will keep my commandments.
These three
steps are not a legalist check list but a map with which to start every day on
the journey of a thousand miles that begins with the first step.
Jerry Sweers
GROWING OLD AIN’T FOR SISSIES
Sailing directions for
Pilgrims of the Heart.
Remembrances, reflections and
rants
of an endangered species;
Curmudgensis Americanus Bibliophilius
site: crmudgeon.blogspot.com
