I spent a bit of time contemplating the nature of joy today and arrived at the following thoughts:
1. Christianity is a religion of joy. How could it not be? But the joy permeating Christianity extends well beyond the joy we experience during our transitory mortal lives.
2. Christians must not limit their experience and comprehension of joy to this world in much the same way they must not limit their experience and comprehension of life to this world. To do so would entail restriction and over-attachment to the joys of this world, nearly all of which are ephemeral. Over-attachment to temporal joys could perhaps even lead to the pursuit of hedonism and a subsequent weakening of Christian life.
3. Detachment from and denial of temporal joy is not the answer. Christians should embrace all worldly joys that are aligned with Divine Will and Creation, but they should do so from the perspective of love. In other words, allow themselves to 'enjoy' worldly joy as an unenduring blessing/experience. They should not try to trap, preserve, or cling to the blessing/experience, but grant it the freedom to live out its course. Doing so should provide a glimpse of the enduring joy of eternal life based in freedom.
As I finished thinking about these things, it quickly dawned on me that the thoughts were not my own (which is the case with about 99.7635% of my thoughts), but rather the reformulated lines of William Blake's short poem, Eternity:
He who binds himself to joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise
1. Christianity is a religion of joy. How could it not be? But the joy permeating Christianity extends well beyond the joy we experience during our transitory mortal lives.
2. Christians must not limit their experience and comprehension of joy to this world in much the same way they must not limit their experience and comprehension of life to this world. To do so would entail restriction and over-attachment to the joys of this world, nearly all of which are ephemeral. Over-attachment to temporal joys could perhaps even lead to the pursuit of hedonism and a subsequent weakening of Christian life.
3. Detachment from and denial of temporal joy is not the answer. Christians should embrace all worldly joys that are aligned with Divine Will and Creation, but they should do so from the perspective of love. In other words, allow themselves to 'enjoy' worldly joy as an unenduring blessing/experience. They should not try to trap, preserve, or cling to the blessing/experience, but grant it the freedom to live out its course. Doing so should provide a glimpse of the enduring joy of eternal life based in freedom.
As I finished thinking about these things, it quickly dawned on me that the thoughts were not my own (which is the case with about 99.7635% of my thoughts), but rather the reformulated lines of William Blake's short poem, Eternity:
He who binds himself to joy
Does the winged life destroy
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity's sunrise
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