90 Days of Joy

This has been a wondrous year of grace to me, our family, and our church.  At the center of it all was a 3 month journey for my heart.

Melancholy has been a consistent pattern of my life, and more so as I have moved deeper into mid-life.  I have been aware, at times, of a groundnote of sadness.  This last summer, two weeks before the wedding of our youngest, I was headed to bed, getting ready to pray with my wife, when the Lord said, "I want to heal your sadness with joy."  Well, it was not audible, but it was clear. And with it the Spirit brought to mind a book long forgotten -- Champagne for the Soul by Mike Mason. Mason wrote the best book ever on marriage many many years ago -- it is gloriously impractical and poetic (The Mystery of Marriage), even if deficient in some areas.  But I digress.

Mason put together 90 days of short readings on the theme of joy. God directed me to do this -- for the 90 days -- and not to do anything else devotionally.  I balked.  I always have a list of 3 or 4 things to do devotionally and I rarely can focus on one thing for more than two weeks.  90 days?  One book? On joy?  What can possibly be said about joy for 90 days? 

But God was good and grace sustained me -- and for 90 days I drank the champagne.  Was I ever wrong!  The Scriptures are full of joy and our God is a joyous God.  Jesus was anointed with the oil of gladness above his fellows. Heaven is a world of joy. If I am abiding in Christ, then I will know his joy.  If I am dour and sad and super serious and endlessly self-analyzing -- then I must not be in communion with the God of joy. My seriousness is more about abiding in my own seriousness.  It seemed that I thought I could be walking with Christ and be, as one author put it, as humorless as a chicken (ever see one smile?).

Since then I have read and re-read C S Lewis The Great Divorce and heard his marvelous development of the joys of glory -- and the sinful resistance to joy that is in my soul.  How many times the Lord invites us all into his joy -- and we shall enter his joy forever on that last day.

I am sure I should qualify this recommendation -- yes, I am aware that Lewis was Anglican, held some unusual views here and there -- yes, I am aware Mason is not as Gospel centered or as orthodox in every word as I might like.  But if I let those get in the way of my reading and benefiting from these two works, well, that would be sad. . . .

I still tend to be the Puddleglum of the family, but there has been a taste of the Lord's joy -- and it is a gift of grace purchased through the cross.  I am so grateful for a taste of joy unspeakable and full of glory.

Comments

[Melissa Goins]

SOOO good! Thanks for sharing!