Joy pt.2: Swelling Joy?

Every time I’ve talked with someone about their joy its been referred to like mountains and valleys. Some days, or weeks, or months are the mountains while others the valleys. But there is something else each of these conversations has in common.
Each time it has been implied, whether overtly through simple statement or covertly through shifting language, that all of life must be the mountaintop. All of life must be a swelling of joy like high tide all the time. But it won’t be that way, thank God.
It’s a simple thought; if everything were extraordinary then nothing would be extraordinary. The same applies here. If all of life were the mountaintop then none of life would be the mountaintop… We’d be these mindless joyless (or joy filled, both would look similar) zombies walking around on the plains of western Kansas.
Thank God there are deep, dark, depressive valleys. Thank God these valleys are full of cobwebs, spiders, and snakes. Thank God they smell of rotting flesh. Thank God they are filled with swamps and mires. Thank God the wear our souls raw and make us bleed.
If all of life were a mountaintop, none of life would bring us to our knees in humble adoration of being so frail and God being the maker of the valley and the mountain.
Those valleys, those low tides where your joy is under the carpet (or even the cement under the carpet) stand in stark contrast to those mountains, those high tides where standing on the carpet you were previously under is an easy thing to do.
However we thank God for the surmountable gloriousness of the mountains. We thank God these mountains bring us to the fresh clean air where our lungs are cleansed. We thank God these mountains bring rest and mend our souls.
The tide must always go out, and the valley follows every mountain it is the rhythm of saved-sinner’s lives, so when these happen and we are the dirt beneath the concrete we bless the hand that counts us worthy to suffer for his glory and in so doing kindle our joy (by God’s grace).

Uncategorize-able

We live vibrantly and breathe wholesomely not because we are worthy of the breath or the life but because God bought the breath and the life… I don’t have a category for this.
It was put well at Community Group last night, “We are poodles with smelly necrotic maggot ridden flesh and tumors growing all over our bodies. Deserving nothing more than to be buried or shot. Completely unworthy of life. But God pulls up in his Cadillac takes us to his mansion and bathes us, picks the maggots from our flesh, and calls us his own.”
We are redeemed… We who were once covered in necrotic festering flesh with only the maggots to clean the wounds have been adopted by the King, taken to his palace and bathed by his Son.
We are redeemed… We who once were lying rotting in the morgue have had God breath life into our lungs.
We are redeemed… “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it-the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” Romans 3:21-26
We are redeemed… Though wretches we are and sinners will be; though idols we’ll seek and God we will hate; by the unrelenting grace and mercy of God we are redeemed…
This cannot be categorized. Indeed my life must go into its category. ‘He made him who knew no sin to be sin so that I might become the righteousness of God; that while I was still a sinner Christ died for me; there is therefore now no condemnation because I am in Christ Jesus.’ Redemption.

Joy Pt.1

Joy is an interesting thing. We gauge our lives by our wealth of or lack of joy. We wonder at those things that produce it and those things that rob us of it. But what is it? My dictionary says, “A feeling of great pleasure and happiness” but my head tells me it’s more than that.
It’s a limited definition, if we take my dictionary’s word; we are limited to our feelings, the waxing and waning of emotion in the gusts of life. Quite frankly it’s unsustainable. John Piper would say joy is forgetting yourself in awe of something bigger and grander than you like the Alps, or a sunset, or God. But even that seems unsustainable to me.
I cannot always marvel at grandeur. Maybe it’s just me, but my head quickly becomes accustomed to the altitude and my heart quickly grows faint of the light and I return to where I began, lacking joy… And yet, it remains. Though I lack the swelling of joy, joy still remains, however small my portion may be, it’s still there, for there is grace.
Grace and joy walk hand-in-hand like lovers down a lane, inseparable. Often this is forgotten for want of resplendence. Rather than taking joy in the ordinary things, we reach continually for the heavens. We wear out our arms by grasping at splendor and we tire our legs by running from grandeur to grandeur. But we must be treading lightly. For if we do not keep a close watch the ordinary graces in life will turn into mud-pies in the slums rather than being sand-castles by the sea (Lewis).
So we look to the graces in our lives, those things we don’t deserve; which is all of life, to be joy filled. For in these ordinary things we are reminded of an extraordinary deed. We live and breathe because God was gracious to us in the Gospel. We see and hear because there is life in our hearts and souls. So though we often feel like we are absent and void of joy, by God’s grace, we must remember God’s grace for in so doing we find joy.