Monday: Never Associated God with Joy Before
WEEK 32
MONDAY
NEVER ASSOCIATED GOD WITH JOY BEFORE
Psalm 59:16-17
We are looking at the mastery of gloom and sadness in the pages of the Acts.
A cultured woman who had a Roman Catholic background underwent a real spiritual conversion, and she exclaimed, “Strange, but I never associated God with joy before.” God was the Unbroken Silence, awesome and apart, or the Stern Lawgiver, demanding obedience or else! But God as Joy—well, only those who know God know!
A letter came to me that said, “I have had it in every way imaginable as far as temptations, trials, burdens, physicians, psychologists, and parsons are concerned. I’ve had psychotherapy, logotherapy, bibliotherapy, and just rockin’ in the sun. The experiences of the last two years would fill a book and bore you to distraction. Today after despairing of ever attaining release, it finally happened. The best part was not as a storm or a quiet stealing into the heart; it came to me like this: Dark curtains round me are lifting; cleansing winds of heaven are blowing over and around me; cool, sweet water is flowing in; now there is neither pain nor great joy. Just a solid, steady calm and him—he is here!”
That last phrase was the secret—“he is here!” Where God is, there is no gloom; and where God is fully, there Joy is fully, for God is Joy!
A committee went to the station to meet their new rector, whom they had never seen. They walked up to a man they thought might be the rector, and asked, “Are you our new rector?” He shook his head sadly and said, “No, it’s dyspepsia that makes me look this way.” When I ask some people if they are happy, and they reply that they are, then I suggest that they notify their faces. You didn’t have to tell these early Christians to notify their faces, for their faces notified others that they had found a deep spring of Joy within. The people couldn’t account for this Joy except on the basis that they were drunk. Peter replied, “These people aren’t drunk, as you suspect” (Acts 2:15); “as you suspect”—they were drunk with God and hence with Joy!
O Joy that seeks me through pain, I dare not close my heart to you. Help me to accept you and thus to accept your Joy. For I cannot have you without Joy. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: If “joy is the strength of the people of God,” then joy shall be my strength today.