Joy

It took me quite a while to get a better understanding of what 'love' actually means. We all throw the word around as if we know what it means, but you seldom here it defined; and so I think most people's definition would include at least some element of sentimental feeling or romantic attraction - probably a concession to 'brotherly' or 'sisterly' love to describe the feelings we have for our family members. But I don't think many have the understanding that 'love' is a verb, not a noun - an action word that means to will the best for the other.

Well, now that I think I understand that word a bit better, even though I'm pretty poor at living it, I'm now faced with trying to get my head around this word 'joy'. It's another one we hear frequently repeated by Jesus, but again, I don't think there's a real understanding of what it means, in His terms.

Remember, the prophet Isaiah described the Savior as 'a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief'. Throughout His public life, He was in constant contact with the sick, the dying, the recently deceased, the poor, the low-life of society. And once it became known that He possessed super-human powers of healing and spoke words of great comfort and assurance to the down-trodden, they didn't leave Him alone, but pursued Him day and night throughout the countryside, so that He had to steal away to have a few minutes of quiet time. He gave and gave and gave some more - and, in return, He was hounded by all of the powerful people of the day, targeted for destruction. This doesn't really look like our picture of a life of 'joy' - and yet He claimed that He had it, and that His friends could have it, and that no one could take it away.....

It would seem that, since Jesus, the Creator of the world, knew what He was talking about in this regard, it must be we who have an incorrect understanding of this 'joy'. 

To learn more about what this word means for us in our own lives, I did what any 21st-century person would do - I started searching online. My search led me to - who else? - C. S. Lewis. Lewis describes joy, not as a sense of a satisfied longing, but instead, an unsatisfied ache for something beyond this world. To him, our problem is not that we expect too much, but that we expect too little - our desires are too small. We've set our sights too low - God offers us so much more than we dare to want. But if we take that step of daring and accept that joy is found in the emptying of ourselves, we will see everything in a new and different light - we'll understand the joy that Jesus is talking about.

Once we grasp this understanding of joy, then it becomes possible to see it in a suffering, crucified Savior. Then we can begin to see through that crucifix and into the pain and suffering in our own lives, join our suffering to His - and share in His joy.