DISCIPLE IN JOY

THE DISCIPLE IN JOY

My heart is resting, O my God,

I will give thanks and sing;
My heart is at the secret source

Of every precious thing.

— Anna. L. Waring

            When Eliphaz the Teminite said "Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward" (Job 5:7) he gave utterance to a conclusion arrived at after careful observation of the common lot of man; he did not declare the birth to trouble to be an essential of human nature per se. Under existing conditions man is so born, but that is contrary to the original purpose of God for him. The divine intention is the joy, the happiness, of all men. Sorrow is an interpolation in the divine plan, necessary and beneficent as we saw in our last chapter. Joy is the normal condition of man, God's highest work. Sad and sorrowful as the earth is today in all lands and climes, man's capacity for joy is evinced in the fact that, in the vast majority of lives, there are more days of happiness than sorrow. In the face of overwhelming disaster in all the regions of his being, man has set himself with indomitable courage to wrest happiness in some form out of his circumstances, and to cry, "Begone dull care." Much of the so-called happiness of men is inexpressibly sad, and poor, and sinful, yet the fact remains that the great bulk of humanity has set itself to seek for happiness, and in that fact lies the proof that for joy man was at first constructed. Every form of enjoyment that man has de­vised for himself is his attempt to reconstruct out of hopeless wreckage and ruin the glorious past. Heartbreaking is the picture, yet it is a lurid and appalling testimony to the magnificent possibilities of his being. The man with the muckrake, missing the true vision of glory and brightness in the crown held out to him, does nevertheless witness to his capacity for the crown by his diligent attempt to gather the glitter of a straw, the color of purple, the shimmer of tinsel. Following the argument that sor­row is a sense of loss, we say that joy is the true condition of God's humanity, and that as sorrow entered with the loss of the sense of God, so joy is restored as man finds God.

            1. The disciple restored to communion with God, is restored to the place of joy. That is a remarkable word which the apostle uses in writing to Timothy (1 Tim. 1:11) "The blessed God." It might correctly be translated "the happy God." It marks for us a great fact in the character of God. He is blessed for evermore, happy in the very essential of His nature. Creation complete, He saw it "very good"; and the "rest" of God was not recuperation after toil, but complacency, satisfaction, happiness in His work. The inspired seers of the past saw Him, and, though the surroundings of His throne were to them, clouds and darkness, their conception of Him was forever that of glory, beauty, strength, love, peace, happiness. When man fell, that very happiness of God was the movement toward man's recovery. Read the closing words of Zephaniah's prophecy (3:14-20), especially noting the seventeenth verse: "He will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love; he will joy over thee with singing." What words can be more beautifully expressive than these of his blessedness. When Jesus, the express image of the Father came, He gave us in many a graphic picture the same con­ception. The glad Father, the rejoicing shepherd, the happy woman, all teach the same truth. In the great charter of the kingdom, He pronounces upon His disciples the same character. "Blessed" here may be as correctly rendered "Happy," and so those who are His today, are restored to living communion with the "Happy God" and are thus themselves brought into the place where it becomes possible for them to obey the apostolic word, "Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say Rejoice" (Phil. 4:4) .

            All human joy is tarnished by the presence of the element of fear and dread. Man cannot escape from the deepest facts of his own nature, and therefore in the midst of every form of pleasure there comes the unnameable, disturbing element of fear and apprehension  This may be concisely stated by saying; no man has power to perfectly enjoy the present who cannot look the future in the face with assurance. So long as the undiscovered hour of death haunts the consciousness of man with a vague terror, every gladness may be blighted in a moment by the recurrence of thoughts which man would love to banish. I do not speak of low forms of enjoyment, but of high. Love, friendship, home, nature, art, music, all suggest to the un-forgiven soul the awful possibility of cessation, and then the unknown tomorrow becomes the tarnish on all gold, the blight on all fruit, the threat of all hours. The disciple in union with Christ has found the solution of all this mystery. He is at peace with the end, and so is free for the true enjoyment of the "now." Because "to live is Christ," "to die is gain," and because "to die is gain" life is worth living, for the threat has been transformed into the gentle angel who stands ever at the portal of larger and more generous life.

            2. Now, how does this affect the life of the disciple  This twofold fact, of communion with the blessed God and the consequent casting out of fear from the life, introduces into all pure human joy the element which perfects the same. The greatest of earth's joy is in earth's love. The ties of home and family, the communion of friend and lover, how immeasurable are these joys intensified to the believer. The union of two in marriage, based upon the law of ultimate affection between two, when these are both united in Christ to God, how holy, and restful, and satisfying to the heart. The presence in the house of children, when they are recognized as gifts of the Eternal Love, to be nurtured for the king, what glorious and genial sunshine it is. The growth, and development, and success of these when the King's laws are obeyed, what pure and full joy they bring. And then the other great avenues of enjoyment — nature in her thousand varying moods, art in its wondrous possibilities, music in its interpretation of pure thought and high enthusiasm, how the disciple enters all because in his relationship to Christ he holds the mystic key which admits him to their inner secrets. Surely everywhere and at all times the anointed soul can see and hear, and touch, with keenness and precision such as is unknown apart from Christ. Never allow the enemy to suggest to you that discipleship is the limitation of joy. It is the one condition of human life today that opens every door of human delight and permits man to walk in the splendid spaces perfectly at home in the happiness of the "Happy God."

            3. The greatness of this joy overtakes and overwhelms all the sorrows that remain to us. "How many children have you?" asked one of a Christian father. Hear the reply, "Seven — five live with me, and two with Jesus." Surely this was rejoicing in sorrow. Did he not miss the nonsense of the tongues now silent, and the rhythm of the little feet? Assuredly he did from his own home, but he heard them still by faith in the palace home of God, and the joy of possessing some treasure of his very own there, was more than compensation. The joy of sorrow lies, moreover, in the fact that it preludes and prepares for the joy beyond. Of our beloved Lord it is said "Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame," and that marks our glad pathway through all the disciplinary sorrow of probationary days here on earth.     To us on every sorrow falls the light of the joy beyond, and that not merely as compensation, but as result. So, while we are of times "sorrowful" we are "yet always rejoicing."

            4. In our last article we spoke of the new sorrow that comes to the disciple in communion with Christ — that of sympathy with all the sin, and sorrow of suffering humanity. Now, we must also recognize the new joy that springs out of service. To me it is difficult to speak or write of that joy. Have you ever led one soul to Christ? Then you know more than all words can teach you of the essence of real joy. To tell the evangel, to pray with the seeker, to travail in birth for souls, to see the breaking of the light of God, to find another passing to His kingdom, this is life and joy indeed. Paul, the great missionary, the man who so wondrously, in those days of suffering and peril, laid his whole being upon the altar of His Master's cross for other's blessing  could think of no greater joy in heaven than that of souls newborn through his toil and suffering. "For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing  Are not even ye before our Lord Jesus at his coming? For ye are our glory and our joy" (1 Thess. 2:19, 20). And surely that joy is the divine joy. It is over a redeemed people that God "joys with singing " and it is in the accomplishment of the great purposes of the Eternal Love, that the Master "shall see of the travail of his soul and be satisfied."