November 21st
Psalm 126

A Second Spring

‘I have read that during the process of canonization the Catholic Church demands proof of joy in the candidate…I like the suggestion that dourness is not a sacred attribute.’   [Phyllis McGinley]

Ellen Glasgow, in her autobiography, tells of her father who was a Presbyterian elder, full of rectitude and rigid with duty.  ‘He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life he never committed a pleasure.’

Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. Which is the toughest? I think that, for the individual person, a good case could be made for saying that joy is both the easiest and most difficult of them all. 

I have good news and bad news.  One, I know who the happiest people on planet earth are.  Bad news is:  probably none of them are reading this blog!  Apparently, the three keys to happiness are to be female, over 65, and Danish.   (Guardian online).   

The "fruit of the Spirit," Paul calls them, all involve a mixture of divine and human activity. They are gifts, yes, but gifts that presuppose our preparation for them and involvement with them. We work toward peace, we grow in faith, and so forth. But how does one prepare for joy?   

We hold memorial services to remember important occasions.  Here the believing community is remembering with joy and gratitude the year 538 B.C. when King Cyrus, conqueror of Babylon set the exiles free.  The psalmist exults,

1When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,                                        

     we were like those who dream.                                                           

2Then our mouths were filled with laughter,                                                      

     and our tongues with shouts of joy….

It had all been such a miracle.  Who would have expected that the might Babylonian Empire would collapse overnight or that Cyrus would conquer it ‘without firing a shot,’ as actually happened.  It had been like a dream.  And then Cyrus allowed the exiles to return home to Jerusalem.  A time of joy and laughter indeed!  

But then reality strikes.  The exiles return home and the city and Temple lie in ruins, the land fallow.  It has been a few years since they arrived home but home is not the place their grandparents told them about.  And so they pray for restoration. 

THE PEOPLE OF GOD at all times live by both memory and hope.  The ‘agony and the ecstasy belong together as the secret of our identity.’ [1]  In NT terms we always live simultaneously as people of the cross and people of the resurrection.                  

JOY IS the dominant note of the psalm.  So, back to our question: How does one prepare for joy?     

I don’t mean to imply that joy is a moral requirement for Christian discipleship – it is a consequence!   It is not what we have to acquire in order to experience life in Christ; it is what comes to us when we are walking in the way of faith and obedience.    Joy is a product of abundance; it is the overflow of vitality.  It is life working together harmoniously.  In is exuberance.                                   

Joy is the authentic Christian note, a sign of those who are on the way of salvation.  Joy is characteristic of Christian pilgrimage.  It is the first of Jesus’ signs in the Gospel of John (turning water into wine). [2]  Joy reminds us of Paul and Silas singing in a Philippian jail, an experience that led to his most exuberant letter.  ‘Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!’ (Philippians 4.4-5).

We try to get it in other ways ... through entertainment.  Society is bored, gluttonous for diversion and distraction.  But that kind of joy never penetrates our lives, never changes our basic constitution.  The effects are temporary – a few minutes, a few hours at most.  We cannot make ourselves joyful.  Joy cannot be commanded, purchased or arranged.                        But  there is something we can do.  We can decide to live in response to the abundance of God, and not under the dictatorship of our own poor needs.  We can decide to live in the environment of a living God who gives generously and not in our own egos which greedily grab.  The consequence of such a life is joy. 

James Taylor, in his free translation of this psalm, writes:  ‘These new lives born in pain, with God’s help, can still blossom into a second spring.’

 

I saw raindrops on the river,                                                                           

Joy is like the rain.

Bit by bit the river grows,                                                                                        

till all at once it overflows.

Joy is like the rain.       [Medical Mission Sisters]

 

[1]  Van Leeuwen, R. – Psalms for Preaching and Worship, 331.

[2]  Peterson, E. – A Long Obedience, 92.