We were made for peace. We were made for joy! We know this by our reaction to those fleeting moments of peace, of joy --- wherein we try desperately to hold on to the moment, not wishing it to melt from our grasp. And then we try to recreate that moment, often without success.
In his famous biography, Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis traces those rare moments from his childhood, where joy took ahold of his spirit and called him out of himself, leading him forward in search of its reappearance. Later in life, after having found the source of his joy, Lewis reflects on our natural instincts as pointing the way to our ultimate destination. If our thirst is satisfied by a long, cold draft of water, for example, Lewis claims, then our thirst points the way to the thing which will ultimately satisfy it. In the same way, that "something" we are born desiring, all the things that have deeply possessed our souls were tantalizing glimpses, promises never quite fulfilled, echoes that died away just as they caught our ear....is the secret signature of each soul, the incommunicable and unappeasable want, the thing we desired before we met our wives or made our friends, or chose our work, and which we shall still desire on our deathbeds....if we lose this, we lose all.
"You cannot give yourself joy," someone once told me....and those words hit me with their truth. I had been seeking peace....and joy, but those things that I thought would satisfy my search helped for only a moment, and I had to keep on doing the thing that helped...yoga, transcendental meditation, positive thinking...or else anger, helplessness, and frustration returned as a sort of garment I could not take off.
When the Holy Spirit entered my life, I began to discover the truth of Jesus' words, "Not by bread alone does man live, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God." His words are truth; they are peace; they are joy. I could not get enough of them. Like a starving man, I began to devour them until peace began to reign in me as a permanent state. Until my joy was overflowing like a stream that I did not have to fill myself. It had another Source, an unending Source: there is a stream that gladdens the city of God, Psalm 46:5 tells us.
The reason I write is to pour out the water, to share with others the Stream, the Water of Life that Jesus promised to the Samaritan woman coming to the well to draw water for herself and her household. I want everyone I love to share in the ultimate banquet that satisfies our hunger and thirst. Jesus compared the idea of heaven to a banquet. As the seven sons of Job invited one another in turn to a splendid feast, and "great must have been the reciprocal love of Job's sons when they placed all their riches in common....so in paradise, the children of God bid each other to the partaking of their felicities" Francois Rene Blot, In Heaven We'll Meet Again: The Saints and Scripture on our Heavenly Reunion, p. 110).
Once we begin to taste for ourselves the thing that satisfies our innermost cravings; once we begin to drink of the most refreshing and life-giving water, we can no longer be satisfied to eat and drink alone.. We find ourselves going out to the highways and byways, inviting all we meet along the way to share with us in the Banquet of Peace, the Draft of Joy!
No comments:
Post a Comment