by Brandon Nappi
Our society puts incredible pressure on us to be happy. Shelves at bookstores are spilling over with self-help books. In our culture, happiness is a billion dollar industry which peddles everything from wrinkle-free skin, to slim waist lines, to the perfect sex life. I don’t know about you, but this pressure to be happy is making me unhappy. Think of the messages that we invite into our homes by way of television: you’re fat, ugly, too old, too wrinkled, too stupid, too busy, too tired. Billions of dollars a year are spent to entice us to measure our happiness by externals.
Yet true Christian joy is like the current deep below the river where I bring my young daughters to play. Depending upon which point of the river we come to, we can see calm pools of peace, crashing whitewater, or places where the water almost seems to be running backwards as it encounters giant boulders and tree trunks. The surface of the river knows the great variety of activity, but deep beneath the surface, the water knows only one direction. Your sorrow, anger, frustration, and worry along with your happiness, gratitude, and elation are all wonderful parts of what it means to be human. If those emotions make up the chaotic surface of the river of our humanity, then joy is the current deep beneath. So you can have joy even in your sorrow. You can have joy deep beneath your anger.
In an age when we are pressured to be happy from the outside, we easily forget that joy comes from deep within. I remember my very first year at the retreat center, a retreatant came into my office. “How are you?” I asked. “AWEFUL!” she declared. She had been homeless, beaten by her husband, and abandoned by her family. She struggled with addiction and depression while living alone in chronic pain. She said that her life had not been easy. Still, she declared, “Joy is not the absence of suffering. Joy is the presence of God.” This constant availability of God is the true foundation of Christian joy.
So how do you become a joyful person? Being joyful is not about becoming something you’re not; it’s not about getting something you don’t have. Being joyful is about accessing something you already have. You become joyful by opening your eyes and discovering that God’s presence is with you in every place and every moment.
The great surprise of Christian joy is that it is always available. It’s nothing of consequence. It’s provoked by the thing you walk past everyday. You step on it as you walk out your front door. It lies just through your kitchen window. What is remarkable about joy is precisely that it is not remarkable. It’s a joy that God has generously scattered all over the earth like sprinkles on my daughters’ cupcakes. We’ve missed this in our churches. For too long, we’ve made the Christian life a rather gloomy and somber existence in which holiness has been defined by how aloof, disconnected, and how other-worldly we become. Joyless Christianity is not Christianity. Let’s remember the wise words from Julian of Norwich, the 15th mystic who said, “The greatest honor that you can give Almighty God, greater than all your penances and sacrifices and mortifications, is to live joyfully because of the knowledge of his love.”
Yet true Christian joy is like the current deep below the river where I bring my young daughters to play. Depending upon which point of the river we come to, we can see calm pools of peace, crashing whitewater, or places where the water almost seems to be running backwards as it encounters giant boulders and tree trunks. The surface of the river knows the great variety of activity, but deep beneath the surface, the water knows only one direction. Your sorrow, anger, frustration, and worry along with your happiness, gratitude, and elation are all wonderful parts of what it means to be human. If those emotions make up the chaotic surface of the river of our humanity, then joy is the current deep beneath. So you can have joy even in your sorrow. You can have joy deep beneath your anger.
In an age when we are pressured to be happy from the outside, we easily forget that joy comes from deep within. I remember my very first year at the retreat center, a retreatant came into my office. “How are you?” I asked. “AWEFUL!” she declared. She had been homeless, beaten by her husband, and abandoned by her family. She struggled with addiction and depression while living alone in chronic pain. She said that her life had not been easy. Still, she declared, “Joy is not the absence of suffering. Joy is the presence of God.” This constant availability of God is the true foundation of Christian joy.
So how do you become a joyful person? Being joyful is not about becoming something you’re not; it’s not about getting something you don’t have. Being joyful is about accessing something you already have. You become joyful by opening your eyes and discovering that God’s presence is with you in every place and every moment.
The great surprise of Christian joy is that it is always available. It’s nothing of consequence. It’s provoked by the thing you walk past everyday. You step on it as you walk out your front door. It lies just through your kitchen window. What is remarkable about joy is precisely that it is not remarkable. It’s a joy that God has generously scattered all over the earth like sprinkles on my daughters’ cupcakes. We’ve missed this in our churches. For too long, we’ve made the Christian life a rather gloomy and somber existence in which holiness has been defined by how aloof, disconnected, and how other-worldly we become. Joyless Christianity is not Christianity. Let’s remember the wise words from Julian of Norwich, the 15th mystic who said, “The greatest honor that you can give Almighty God, greater than all your penances and sacrifices and mortifications, is to live joyfully because of the knowledge of his love.”
