Post Script | December 5, 2022
Running After Joy
I am writing this letter several days before you receive it, as I generally try to do. This gives time for the writing to unwrinkle, to shake out, to settle, to reveal what is more or less helpful. I also knew I needed to write this letter early because I’d likely be in no shape to write to you while I was traveling this past weekend to California.
As I’ve often said when I’m invited to speak in California, I will never refuse an invitation to the land of sun during the winter months. But closer to the truth, I find it difficult to travel to California given the time change and the normally short length of my stay. I remember years ago, speaking at a California event after a long day of travel. I started at 8pm PST, which of course is a whole hour past my normal bedtime. I was exhausted—and those poor folks, they heard me croak and ramble for a good 45 minutes. If God used those words, it was a mercy.
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to speak about joy. (As I’ve explained, I’m writing this before the event, so I can’t say how things went. But I can say I only had to speak on Saturday mid-afternoon, thanks be to God!) I couldn’t refuse this invitation when I was told they’d chosen as the theme verse Psalm 16:11: “You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”
This is as close as it gets to a life verse for me.
Enjoy is one of the eight good time habits in my forthcoming book. Again, to get honest, it’s not the most stirring habit for someone like me who aspires to get things done. Enjoy has often felt like the preferred activity for people who prefer pajamas to zippered pants, a word to suggest a pleasure-seeking involving Cheetos and Netflix. Forgive that I’m so tightly wound—(or should I say, so well-formed by productivity culture?)—but I’m not always able to see the good in joy.
But this is what Psalm 16 is all about: about the ultimate good as we find it in God. It reminds us of a central truth of the Christian faith: that to follow Christ isn’t about forsaking joy but finding it.
You’d know, of course, that I’d have to find a way to bring this letter around to Dante and the Divine Comedy, which I’m still plodding through. In Purgatorio, the second canticle of the Comedy, the stain of human sin is being removed from sinners, and they grow lighter and freer as they progress to Paradise. (Please leave aside theological objections here to the idea of Purgatory. We can read this as a literary text.)
It's interesting that in the part of Purgatorio where the sin of sloth is purged from those who neglected their joy on earth, their feet are made swift. They run, rather than walk after the good that is God.
“Quick, quick! Let not the precious time be lost
For lack of love!” the others cried, pursuing:
“In good work strive, till grace revive from dust!” (Purgatorio, XVIII, ll. 106-108).
These sinners-soon-to-be saints don’t want to delay. They want to hasten after their joy. They insist on running—language that, incidentally, is quite common in the Bible. But I must confess that this is not my posture in life. If I am running, it’s because I’m late. If I am running, it’s because I’m anxious about what might potentially be left undone.
I am rarely running to enjoy God.
But maybe this month, with its Advent and Christmas invitations, we can get our feet moving. Not towards greater productivity or anxious hurry but to the joy of celebrating that God has made known the path of life, has clothed himself with flesh and made his presence known, has invited us into his own fullness of joy.
I like how Amanda Held Opelt put it in her recent newsletter:
“Holidays serve an important role in our lives. They force us to stop, to contemplate the divine. Holidays are a holy interruption to our tightly controlled routines. They remind us that we are humans, not machines and that we need times and spaces dedicated to celebration and the savoring of life’s goodness. Let’s not lose the beauty of that in the busyness and excesses of our productivity driven culture. If nothing else, a truly traditional holiday is one that remembers we cannot always produce, that we are dependent on God and one another. That feels like a truth worth marking with at least a little bit of merry-making.”
REMINDER: You’ve got a little more than a week to sign up for my January Rule of Life workshop. Preorder and invite a friend. And not sure what I’m talking about? Read here, here, or here. You can also follow me on Instagram, and find some of my recent posts, including a video explaining the premise of the book and the accompanying workshop. Hope to see you starting January 8th, 7pm EST. If you have signed up, expect to get a couple of emails from me before then!