Getting the Joy of Christ
“Take Joy home,
And make a place in thy great heart for her, And give her time to grow, and cherish her I Then will she come and often sing to thee When thou art working in the furrows! ay, Or weeding in the sacred hours of dawn. It is a comely fashion to be glad — Joy is the grace we say to God.”
JEAN INGELOW.
THE ideal life is one of joy. The face ought to be shining, — shining even in darkness. People say this is a sad world. Yes, for those who have eyes only for shadows. What we see is the imaging on the life around us of the colors of our own inner life. He who has the bird in his eye sees the bird in the bush. He who has songs in his heart hears songs wherever he goes. This is a sad world for the sad man. Darkness within finds only darkness without. But if one carries a lantern when he goes out at night, one finds light wherever he goes. If one’s face shines with an inner joy, one finds joy even in the deep night of sorrow.
Christ said a great deal about desiring joy in his disciples. He put it both in sermon and in prayer. He said he had spoken to them certain things in order that they might have his joy in them. It is clear that joy was his ideal for Christian life.
It is remarkable, too, that most of his words about joy were spoken the night before he died. This suggests that he meant his followers to have this joy, not only in their happy days, but when they were in sadness. It is evident, also, that it is not earthly gladness that he desires his friends to have, but a joy that dwells deep in the heart, — too deep for any earthly pain or sorrow to touch.
Surely here is a secret worth learning. There are a thousand things in this world that tend to disturb or destroy human happiness. If there is a way to live beyond the reach of these things, to live a life calm, serene, rejoicing, victorious, songful, in the midst of sorrow, loss, struggle, pain, and wrong, we ought to know it.
It is certain that we cannot get this joy by finding a place where the world’s cares and hurts cannot reach us. There is no such place on this earth. No walls can shut out pain and trial. Christ did not ask that his disciples should be taken out of the world. They must live, as he did, in ordinary human conditions. The wind blows no more softly for you because you are God’s child. Christ does not give us his joy by sheltering us from the things that might disturb the joy.
Nor does he give it by so changing our nature that we shall not feel the griefs and pains of life. To do this he would have to rob our hearts of the very qualities in them that are noblest and divinest. Power to enjoy and to be happy would also be destroyed with the power to suffer; for our joys and pains grow on the same stalk. Rack, stocks, and prisonchains hurt the disciples no less because they had the love of Christ in them.
We must get Christ’s joy as he got it. One secret was his unbroken consciousness of his Father’s love. When men hated him, when the world assaulted him, he fled to his Father, and found a refuge into which none could fol low him, whose calm peace none could disturb. We, too, must keep ourselves in the love of God if we would find this joy.
Absolute devotion to the divine will was another of the secrets of Christ’s joy. He never did his own will. In this way only can we find joy. “True, pure joy,” says Amicl, “consists in the union of the individual will with the divine will, and in the faith that this supreme will is directed by love.”
Another secret of the joy of Christ was in his service and sacrifice of love. The angels see human joy on earth, not where men seek for happiness of their own, not where they are living to find their own good and pleasure, but where they are toiling and denying them selves to give happiness to others. Christ’s whole life was devoted to ministry for others, and every service of love yielded him joy. His death, too, was the voluntary giving of himself for others. There is a beautiful legend which gives us a glimpse of the joy which Christ found even in going to his cross. Father Ryan gives it thus, —
“He walked beside the sea: he took his sandals off To bathe his weary feet in the pure, cool wave, — For he had walked across the desert sands All day long, — and as he bathed his feet, He murmured to himself, ‘Three years! Three years! And then, poor feet, the cruel nails will come And make you bleed; but that blood will lave All weary feet on all their thorny ways.’”
The deepest joy of Christ’s life must have been in his dying, for this was his greatest sacrifice and service. We get a glimmering of this experience in the word which says that “for the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame;” and we have its foreshadowing in the prophetic assurance that he should see of the travail of his soul, and should be satisfied. We can get this joy of Christ only as we enter into his life of self-giving love. Selfishness yields no true gladness. Serving starts songs in the heart. If we would have the joy of Christ we must enter into the spirit of the life of Christ. He was in this world to bless and save it. We can share his joy only as we share his love for the world, and live to bless and help to save it.
Another secret of the joy of Christ was in his always keeping his face toward the light. His look was ever upward. His eye was ever turned toward his Father and toward heaven. He saw only brightness. Many Christians need to learn this lesson. They look too much at the darkness of the world. They think of their sorrows, not of their joys. They let fear drive out courage and hope. If we would have Christ’s joy we must train ourselves persistently — it is matter of training and habit largely — to look toward the light. There are flowers that keep their faces always turned toward the sun. That is the way we should learn to live. If we look ever toward the light, the light will enter into us and fill us with its own radiance.
GETTING THE JOY UP CHRIST. 2$?
In another of our Lord’s words he tells us that Christian joy is transformed sorrow. He said to his disciples, “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy.” He did not tell them that their sorrow should be taken away and joy given in its place, but that the sorrow itself should be turned into joy. When there has been a bereavement, he does not comfort by giving back the loved one. When there has been a disappointment, he does not undo it, and put into the life the dear thing that was wanted so much. The trouble is not removed, but it becomes a joy. This was fulfilled literally in respect to the cross, whose utter blackness became, later, the most glorious light the world has ever seen.
The same transformation takes place in every sorrow of Christian faith; it is turned into joy. In the depths of every dark thunder cloud there is a rainbow hidden, which will break forth when the sun smites upon the cloud. And there is no trouble that comes to any Christian which has not, lying concealed within its folds, a divine blessing of joy, which will be revealed when the love of Christ shines upon it. You bow low in sorrow when death has touched a loved one of yours and the circle is broken. The loss seems irreparable. The grief appears too deep ever to receive comfort. But the Comforter comes, the consolations of divine love are given, and the sorrow is turned into joy. The sense of loss is not taken away. The friend is not given back. The keenness of the grief is not softened. But the love of Christ is revealed. The truth of immortal blessedness becomes a window through which faith’s eye sees into the heavenly glory, beholding, not death, but radiant life. The will of God, that seemed to crush like a falling avalanche the heart’s frail joys, appears now the very hand of love, blessing, and doing good. The sorrow becomes deep joy.
In every life that has passed through such experiences and has kept its faith, the sweetest, richest joys are always transformed sorrows. The best things in any life are not things born of summer days, the things that come without cost or effort. One writes: — “Joys that cost nothing give us little pleasure; We value most the things most hardly won. Men that delve deep to find earth’s hidden treasure Would pass it by if open to the sun.”
The things we prize most are not those we have gathered, as one plucks flowers on a summer hillside, from the gardens of ease and worldly pleasure. They are things that have become ours through pain, struggle, self-denial, and tears. The lessons learned with greatest difficulty are the ones that are most to us in value and profit. Out of the hardest experiences of struggle and sacrifice we get the qualities that are the brightest ornaments of our character, and the noblest elements of our strength. The lenses through which now we see deepest into heaven once were salt tears. The treasures we hold now with firmest clasp once seemed marred things, unsightly, unlovely, things we shrank from receiving. The points in our past which now appear to have been fullest of outcome of good for our life, are those which at the time seemed God’s strange ways with us. Christian joy is transformed sorrow.
Another thing about this joy that Christ gives is that it cannot be taken away from us. Not dependent on earthly conditions, earthly accidents cannot reach it. Very much of our happiness others can take from us. They may rob us of our property. They may smite us with bodily wounding. We may lose out of our own life the things we love, the things which give us comfort and pleasure. But, if we are believers in Christ, we have an inner gladness which no one can touch.
We can conceive of a strong fortress, in time of war, all of whose outer approaches may be assailed and despoiled, but within whose walls and gates there is a place of security which no enemy can enter, which no desolating hand of war can touch. There, if you were to pass within, you would find a quiet home, with music and pictures, with garden and flowers, with love and peace. Like this is the true Christian life. It has its unassailable fortress-Without in the world there are troubles and antagonisms, and the outer gladness may all be swept away; but, within, there is a holy place of peace which nothing can invade. How that man is to be pitied who has no joy that others cannot take away, whose whole life, to its innermost stronghold, is open to the tread of alien feet! It is dreadful to have no joys of which the world cannot rob us, to have all our happiness, the deepest and most sacred, within the reach of human or earthly despoiling. Yet there are many people of whom this is true. They have no inner sanctuary of life which is beyond the reach of intrusion, which no foot can invade, which no hand can desecrate. But if we are the friends of Christ, our heart’s joy should be inviolable. Our property, our loved ones, our health, may be taken iway, and all earthly sources of happiness despoiled; but deep within, untouched and un touchable, the joy of Christ should still and ever abide.
This is the ideal Christian life. It is possible to every one, — the weakest, the most exposed, the most sorely troubled, — possible, but pos sible only in Christ. There is no self-sufficiency in us which will give it to us. The dream of self-culture may be most radiant, but it is only a dream; it never can be realized. All that self alone can build up may be destroyed. The fairy palace of self-sufficiency which one may pile up can be nothing more than a house built upon the sand, which the floods will sweep away. But when we have Christ in our heart, we have a life which no one can touch, whose joy lives on, sweet, calm, and serene, amid all earth’s strifes and trials.
This is the life every one should seek to live. We should not carry our joy where every earthly experience can destroy it, but only where it will be safe from whatsoever might quench it. It is impossible to estimate the power for good, in this sad, struggling life, of a bright, glad, shining face.
“Of all the lights you carry in your face, Joy shines farthest out to sea.”
One of the best things any of us can do for this world is to show it ever a victorious life oi joy, a face that shines even through tears, a beauty of the Lord which glows with radiance even in the night. That is the life the Master wants every follower of his to live; and we can live it, too, if our life is truly hid with Christ fn God.