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 A few years ago Canadian writer Mike Mason (author of The Mystery of Marriage, The Gospel According to Job, etc.) launched what he called "an experiment in joy": he made up his mind to be joyful in the Lord every day for ninety days. A moody person by nature, for him this was a radical experiment that changed his life. Throughout the ninety days he kept a journal, which eventually became a book on joy entitled Champagne for the Soul.
What follows is part of a series of ten excerpts from that book (now in a new edition by Regent College Publishing, available through Amazon.ca).
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.
Zephaniah 3:17
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?
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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 titled 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 thirty-three 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 timewind, traffic, birds, people coughing or breathing, nothing at all, or perhaps the sound of blood moving in one's own body.
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 13/2007
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Our society certainly does have a great need for Christian contemplatives; It is why Religious Orders are so vital. Unbeknownst to most of the world - in the desert, so to speak - removed from the mainstream of society, monk and nuns care for society within their worship, work and WONDER. They know the fulness of Joy of which you speak.
“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” (Rom 12:12)
“And pray that we may be delivered from the wicked and evil men, for not everyone has faith,” (2 Thess3:2)
“Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 15:13)
“The greatest joy of a Christian is to give joy to Christ.” – C.H. Spurgeon.
“Lord, take away from me all joy which does not come directly from the Lord Jesus” – Oswald Chambers
“Prayer is humbling work. It abases intellect and pride, crucifies vainglory and signs our spiritual bankruptcy, and all these are hard for flesh and blood to bear.” – E.M. Bounds