“Let’s not forget the joy”

H,

There is mostly a somber tone to the things we profess. I suspect some of this is just our antidote to the dole-eyed faux optimism of our youth. We had a run where we performed the great role of sounding like we knew all the answers and making God a rewarder of them that seek Him with smile and song and dance. This laughable coaxing of God to be “who He is” fell flat as we pursued Him and the fragments that remain in our spiritual experience have been crushed by the other overreach, the stoic nature of false depth. No clapping or singing or ability to dance masquerading as the apologist stance; too high and intellectual for these low things.

We must not forget the joy, though. This is a story of the light and not the dark. We cannot go further the other way. There is joy in both approaches. Surely, there are many ways to approach the “multi-breasted” God. There is no superior one. They are all parts of the same experience accessed by our diverse hearts and souls and happenstances. There is joy in all of it.

We are discovering who we will forever be. We are learning to be honest about who we are now. We are thriving through sin and decay and taking on the cloak and moniker of eternal beings. There is nothing small occurring. The whole world is designed to make us forget this. It is made up of false symbols and false precepts of power. It tells us to chase the things that will protect us from feeling, from connecting with others, from feeling ‘ordinary’ and from really empathizing. It is arranged in rules to make it all black and white, to make some things unforgivable and others acceptable according to bent and ideology. It is not made for the fragile heart. It is not set up for feeling. We are only happy in relation to someone else. We are only advancing in competition, stated or not, with some ideal life. All of our identity is subsumed in the thing we produce. The idea of “purpose” in the Christian life has become a clarion call to justify living by what we produce and not who we are. It is a slight variation but a significant one. We are learning to pray to God as idol and then chase our dreams without the limit of a God on whom we hang our hopes and dreams and all our waiting.

Let’s not forget the joy. This is all a passing world. All our real “impact” is in the eternal kingdom to God. This present world does not hold a candle to that holy call. The joy is in that other place, where everything dark here will bow to the eternal light. We are seeing troubles now that are already conquered. That’s the joy of the thing. The light is coming. The lord is coming.