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 A few years ago, Langley writer Mike Mason (author of The Gospel According to Job and The Mystery of Marriage)
launched what he called “an experiment in joy”: he made up his
mind to be joyful in the Lord every day, for 90 days. A moody person by
nature, this was a radical experiment that changed his life. Throughout the
90 days he kept a journal, which eventually became a book on joy, Champagne for the Soul. Here is
an excerpt.
ACCORDING to Zephaniah 3:17, “the Lord your God
is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he
will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with
singing.”
Have you heard the Lord your God rejoicing over you?
Have you heard him tell you how wonderful you are, how
highly he esteems you? Wouldn’t it increase your joy to know that
your joy in him is only a shadow of his joy in you?
I’m amazed at how God speaks to me at the
unlikeliest times.
It’s not always while I’m praying, and
it’s never when I’m trying to be very good or when I’m
working myself up into a state of holiness.
No, God is more apt to speak while I’m changing
my socks, or biting into a big juicy hamburger or staring vacantly out the
window.
In such odd moments the curtain of reality parts and it
suddenly dawns on me: “Oh, this is all there is to it? This is all
you want of me?”
One day during my experiment, I happened to turn on the
radio just as the announcer was introducing a piece of music by John Cage,
entitled 4’33.
I knew about this piece but had never heard it
performed. Intrigued, I sat down to listen – and I found it to be the
most wonderful music I’d ever heard.
The pianist who played it began by announcing:
“What you are about to hear is exactly what John
Cage wanted you to hear. It may not be what you’re expecting in a
piece of music, but don’t adjust your dial. This is the famous piece,
exactly as John Cage wrote it.”
Anyone familiar with this work will be chuckling by
now, because what Cage wrote consists of four minutes and 33 seconds of
total silence.
No, that’s not quite accurate. Cage’s
instructions are for the musicians to pick up their instruments – but
not to play a note for the entire duration of the piece.
So the music becomes whatever the listener hears during
that time: wind, traffic, birds, people coughing or breathing, nothing at
all, or perhaps the sound of blood moving in one’s own body.
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I listened to this piece mesmerized, because I heard
what I can only describe as the sound of the Lord my God rejoicing over me.
Though I’ve heard this before, it always strikes me as new and
surprising.
Recalling other such experiences, I recognize a common
thread: It tends to happen when I’m sitting perfectly still, doing
nothing.
I have a friend who enjoys just sitting. After years of
dreaming about it, he finally started getting up half an hour earlier to
make a cup of tea, go out on the porch, and just sit.
When I asked him if he prays during this time, he
answered, “No, I just sit.” He has other times for prayer, but
in that first half hour of the day, he just sits.
Our society has a great need for people who will spend
time just sitting. This is the beginning of wonder, and wonder gives birth
to joy.
Throughout my experiment, again and again the Lord came
and restored my joy at times when I was just sitting.
He does this all by himself, without the least effort
on my part, quieting me with his love – and reminding me that joy is
truly miraculous, a work of God.
Though joy may come in many ways,
I suspect it may not come at all without attention
being given to this one way – of just sitting.
To grow a flower, I plant a seed or a bulb. To grow
joy, I must plant myself for a while in one place and just sit.
December 2008
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