Back in the days when CBM printed missionary prayer cards that were posted on many a Baptist refrigerator, the card of my husband, Blair, and I featured a black-and-white photo of our young family, and our chosen life verse:
Psalm 16:11 You will show me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; At Your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
I held to this promise of “fullness of joy” as we entered the precarity of life in Indonesian Borneo. I now cringe a bit to realize how romanticized my vision was of the joyful life of service. Over the decades, my understanding of joy has shifted, expanded and taken on deeper layers of meaning. I now see more clearly the paradox of joy – that joy does not mean the absence of sorrow, but a commingling of both.
Sorrow and Joy
The idea that joy and sorrow are mutually exclusive – that we must bury and forget our pain to experience joy – is a cultural rather than biblical concept. Throughout scripture, especially the Psalms, we see agonizing lament intermingled with joy and praise, often within a few verses. Modern psychology echoes ancient wisdom, warning that to numb our negative emotions is to suppress them all. In learning to grieve deeply, surprisingly, our capacity for joy expands.
Embracing the paradox of joy and sorrow is what enables followers of Jesus, all over the globe, to walk unflinching, into places of sorrow, despair, violence, pain and misery, believing, against all evidence to the contrary, that the darkness will not overcome the light (John 1:5).
Jesus made the paradox strikingly clear when he said, “In this world you will have trouble,” (amen to that!), “but take heart, I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). The paradox of joy means more than taking the good with the bad. Somehow, when the troubles of this world break our hearts wide open, a tender space also opens for joy and peace to enter.
Duty and Delight
In reading old Christian biographies and stories from Canadian Baptists’ 150-year history, I am struck by the theme of Christian duty as a motivation for service. Today, in Western culture at least, the concepts of duty and obligation are becoming anachronistic. Writing for the Globe and Mail, Linda Besner observes that the word obligation has become a dirty word, the antithesis of the cultural narrative that authentic living means casting off external expectations, following your bliss, and doing only those things one enjoys.
Scripture has a different stance. In Psalm 40, David captures a paradoxical truth, that duty and delight can coexist. God is uninterested, says the psalmist, in the performance of religious duties (sacrifices and offerings) without devotion (Psalm 40:6). Our response, however, is not to cast off duty, but to change the heart. “I delight to do your will, O my God” (Psalm 40:8), says David. Duty becomes delight.
John Keith, former head of CBM, spelled out the paradox of duty and delight in the sermon he preached at our commissioning service before we headed overseas. He reminded us that servants (often translated as slaves) have no rights. But this is a paradox to which he testified: “Being a servant of Christ is not convenient, but it’s eminently worthwhile.”
Another beloved CBM leader, Gary Nelson, wrote compellingly about the “ministry of inconvenience” as the mark of missional living. The call to deny ourselves and take up the cross is costly, not convenient. But what transforms duty into delight, as any caregiver knows, is love.
Gift and Choice
A third paradox is that joy is both gift and choice, a fruit of the Spirit (Gal 5:22-23) and a decision to make (Phil 4:4). But what does this mean in ordinary, everyday life when “choosing joy” can sound like a self-help cliché?
Henri Nouwen, writing often from an anguished soul, offers one simple way. He says he made it a daily practice to “listen for the blessing.” Sometimes the voice of blessing is drowned out by louder voices of doubt and recrimination. But listening for the blessing, giving gratitude for the blessing, is an onramp to joy.
I witnessed this firsthand in those early years in Indonesia. In our simple house by a rainforest, I woke each morning from the stillness of the night to the incredible sounds of the jungle coming alive at dawn. Then came another sound – the singing of my Indonesian friend, neighbor and coworker, Vera Tumundo, as she pumped pails of water for the morning wash. Every morning, she started her day singing songs of praise no matter the circumstance. The next sound was the screen door slamming as our little girls ran barefoot down the hill to join the singing and splashing. They loved to be around her – everyone did. Joy was her daily spiritual practice, her act of resistance, her witness. It was a gift of the Spirit and her daily choice.
I see more clearly now the three key words in our chosen verse: “in your presence” (Psalm 16:11). The presence of Emmanuel, God with us, in every circumstance, is the path of life leading to fullness of joy – in all its paradoxes.
Questions for Reflection
- In his beautiful hymn, Isaac Watts, captures the paradox of the cross as a place where “sorrow and love flow mingled down.” Have you known this in your own life – that in a place of deep sorrow, glimmers of love and joy were also found?
- Scriptural promises of joy and delight coexist with teachings and commands regarding our duties as Christ followers. What are real world examples of duties you undertake that in no way are “convenient”? What can transform duty from drudgery to delight?
- Author Kate Bowler challenges the “toxic positivity” in some Christian circles that minimizes or dismisses painful emotions and creates pressure to be joyful, without acknowledging the very real struggles of life. In her words, we need to accept that life is both “beautiful and terrible.” What do you think is the difference between positive thinking and biblical joy?
- Have you known someone in your life who carries the fragrance of joy, who embodies quiet, durable joy? What have you learned from their life about the fullness of joy?
Share your Reflection
Submit your own thoughts as we Reflect Light on our past and explore all the possibilities of our future as Christ leads us.