“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Serve the Lord with gladness;
Come into his presence with singing.
Know that the Lord is God.
It is he who made us, and we are his;
We are his people and the sheep of his pasture.Enter his gates with thanksgiving
-Psalm 100 (NRSVUE)
And his courts with praise.
Give thanks to him; bless his name.
For the Lord is good;
His steadfast love endures forever
And his faithfulness to all generations.”
Last month, I visited about fifteen churches in our district, each for different occasions. One of the highlights was listening to the stories they shared with me, which provided me with insights into how people walk with God. They told me lots of stories. Some stories uplifted my heart. Some stories called for my prayer. It reminded me that our lives are like roses. Just as there is no rose without a thorn, life involves not only joy but also sadness.
Considering the inevitable ups and downs of human existence, I was surprised when I first learned that the sadness of our hearts had been considered a mortal sin in the church since ancient times. Philippians 4:4 commands us to “rejoice in the Lord always” and emphasizes it by saying, “Again I say, rejoice.” Many Christian writers state that we are created and given this life for this purpose, that is, rejoicing in the Lord. This joy is something that no one can take away from us. This joy belongs not only to those who have already gone to heaven but also to us who are still living on earth.
How, then, can we help those who do not have joy? Surely, we cannot help anyone if we do not have this joy in the first place. What kind of joy is this? Bonhoeffer describes this joy not as something made or forced but as something given and free. His plain and poetic explanation of it is worth our time of reflection. In “God is in the Manger,” he wrote, “With God there is joy, and from him it comes down and seizes spirit, soul, and body. And where this joy has seized a person, it reaches out around itself, it pulls others along, it bursts through closed doors.”
This joy is not a kind of joy that does not know anything about pain, distress, or anxiety. Such joy cannot last. The joy to which God calls us knows our deepest pain and suffering. After all, “the joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the distress of the cross; therefore it is invincible and irrefutable.” It is a kind of joy that you can have only when you are with God. It is the joy of the Lord that surpasses all our understanding.
May you and I be seized by this joy.
May the church be filled with it.
May we all rejoice together in the Lord always.
1. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is in the Manger: Reflections on Advent and Christmas, ed. Jana Riess, trans. O. C. Dean Jr., First edition. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 72.
2. Ibid.