I think I must ask you to forgive me in advance, for I strongly suspect this post will ramble. I know not where it will take me, truth be told, for I feel an outburst of joy within me and it seems to be spilling out into everything I do today. So if you are hoping for a strongly edited, structured, and disciplined post such as I usually try to publish, I'm afraid you will be disappointed. But then again, maybe you won't be, as you are introduced to yet another intriguing facet of this writer!
Joy. It's a wonderful word. It's a wonderful emotion, perhaps treasured all the more by people who have suffered, people who have been hurting. It's like seeing a beautiful sunrise on an early morning. It comes upon you all of a sudden, and suddenly you are glad to be alive again. But how do we find this joy? Why do some people seem to have it *all* the time? Is it just an attitude, or is it a decision? Can it be both?
I hope you don't expect me to answer all those questions, for you and I would be here an awfully long time if I tried, but as I ponder these questions I think about who or what gives me joy. Not surprisingly my list contains my family, music, and... my Saviour!! My family gives me joy as I encounter their precious personalities, their foibles, their love, their dedication to serving God through their lives. Music gives me joy as I enter a world unseen, as I encounter expressions of human emotion or depictions of scenes and storylines in a precious language. And my Saviour gives me joy through who He is, what He has done for me, and my day by day relationship with Him.
It's the joy I find in Jesus that deepens and enhances the joy I find in everything else, for He is the most precious Person I have in my life. My family, while I love them dearly, are mere mortals like myself and cannot sustain me every moment of every day, for they have their own cares and concerns too! Music, whilst a wonderful gift, is not a living being, and thus cannot understand me. If I pour out my feelings to a piano, it will not play me a concerto in response in and of itself. It needs a living being to bring it to life. So music also has its failings. But Jesus is always with me, even to the ends of the earth. He sees into my very soul, and amazingly loves me despite my failings and impurities. He gives meaning to my life, for through Him
I can come into the presence of my Heavenly Father, the One who created the universe complete.
God gives us family. God gives us music. But He also gives us Himself and His Word, the greatest Gift any human can receive. Through the ups and downs of life, the joys and the deepest sorrows, His the best joy, the best love, the best comfort we can ever know.
My life flows on in endless song
Above earth's lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation:
Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul--
How can I keep from singing?
What though my joys and comforts die?
The Lord my Saviour liveth;
What though the darkness gather round!
Songs in the night He giveth:
No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that refuge clinging;
Since Christ is Lord of Heav'n and earth,
How can I keep from singing?
I lift my eyes; the cloud grows thin;
I see the blue above it;
And day by day this pathway smoothes
Since first I learned to love it:
The peace of Christ makes fresh my heart,
A fountain ever springing;
All things are mine since I am His--
How can I keep from singing?
Robert Lowry, 1860
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