Bottles from the Springs

Bottled Joy?

Last Sunday our Advent meditations were about Joy!

Joy is Fruit of the Holy Spirit and it “Happens”. You cannot make it!

Much was made about it being a focus and not a feeling.

Psalm 145 and Psalm 146 were compared and contrasted and from it we distilled that Joy and human suffering are somehow tied together.

And in this political season we are warned against trusting in Princes. Earthly, man-made solutions disappoint.

And finally, from the C.S. Lewis book Surprised by Joy: a few quotes... “Joy is distinct not only from pleasure in general but even from aesthetic pleasure. It must have the stab, the pang, the inconsolable longing.” –C.S. 2. “All Joy reminds. It is never a possession, always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still “about to be.” -C.S. Lewis Lewis 3. “It is a by-product. Its very existence presupposes that you desire not it but something other and outer.” -C.S. Lewis 4. “In introspection we try to look “inside ourselves” and see what is going on. But nearly everything that was going on a moment before is stopped by the very act of our turning to look at it.” –C.S. Lewis 5. “The inherent dialectic of desire itself had in a way already shown me this; for all images and sensations, if idolatrously mistaken for Joy itself, soon honestly confessed themselves inadequate.” –C.S. Lewis 6. “Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all.” –C.S. Lewis 7. “It was valuable only as a pointer to something other and outer. While that other was in doubt, the pointer naturally loomed large in my thoughts. When we are lost in the woods the sight of a signpost is a great matter. He who first sees it cries, “Look!” The whole party gathers round and stares. But when we have found the road and are passing signposts every few miles, we shall not stop and stare.” –C.S. Lewis