The RIGHT Kind of Joy

DAILY BYTE

I find Christians like Dietrich Boenhoffer and Alexander Solzhenitsyn fascinating, because they managed to find the ‘second naiveté’ we discussed yesterday, even in the midst of prisons and concentration camps.

Under brutal regimes and tremendous suffering they decided not to allow those experiences to narrow their eyes, but instead chose to widen them in wonder. They used their Incarnational Imaginations! When you learn to live with a sense of wonder rather than suspicion, it is my conviction that you will then learn what true joy is.

Dietrich Boenhoffer was part of a group of German people who refused to swear allegiance to Hitler during the dark times of World War 2. A period of history I would guess that was much darker than the present struggles we face.

This refusal landed Boenhoffer in prison and eventually got him hung just before the war ended. In 1942 he wrote the following words to a group of friends:
“Dear Brethren, in order to awaken you to the RIGHT kind of joy in serious times, we must first list those who been killed since I last wrote.”

The right kind of joy?! That statement fascinates me. The RIGHT kind of wonder, the right way to view and interpret the world around us.

Boenhoffer went onto explain what he meant:
“The kind of joy that I am talking about is not something that is artificially worked up, conjured up or is demanded of us, but it is a gift freely given. Joy dwells in God. Joy is a part of God and comes from Him, possessing spirit, soul and body. Once His joy has grasped a person it grows and carries them away, it throws open closed doors.”

In these days, we need the right kind of joy more than ever. Not the kind of joy that we have to manufacture for ourselves, but the kind of joy that comes from God and which we find by tapping into him and which throws open closed doors and widens eyes previously narrowed in suspicion.

This final quote from Boenhoffer powerfully sums up everything that we have been discussing so far this week:

“The joy of God has been through the poverty of the manger, and the affliction of the cross, therefore it is indestructible, irrefutable. It does not deny affliction when it is there, but it finds in the very midst of distress that God is there. It looks death in the face, and it is just there that it finds life.”

PRAY AS YOU GO

O’ God, joy is a fundamental part of your nature and character, it is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. Thank-you that we don’t have to artificially work up joy, but find it just by throwing open the doors of our lives to you. We ask that you will fill us with the right kind of joy for these serious times. Amen.

FOCUS READING

Romans 5:1-2 (The Message)

By entering through faith into what God has always wanted to do for us ...set us right with him, make us fit for him ...we have it all together with God because of our Master Jesus. And that's not all: We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us. We find ourselves standing where we always hoped we might stand—out in the wide open spaces of God's grace and glory, standing tall and shouting our praise.