With a wedding around the corner, I know a little about trying to plan a "celebration." There's no focus on the celebratory aspects of the event, it's about making sure no distant family member's feelings get hurt, and making sure the food is "perfect," and the dress is just right, and the flowers are all in the right place, and the cake is magnificent, and the bride gets to be treated like an self-indulgent princess for a day. All this building up to the big day puts the actual marriage celebration on the back burner. In third world countries, weddings last for 10 days. A 10-day wedding sounds like torture to me. Is it possible that we have become such cynical people that so much celebrating is more than we can handle?
How do we become joyful people? The verse this week specifically refers to "rejoicing in the truth." Maybe part of the stress over holidays and weddings is that we've lost sight of the truth? It seems to me that if we genuinely recognize the Truth in things, we would want to celebrate them. For example Christmas - we are celebrating the arrival of the Messiah, the salvation from sin, the grace of God on earth. In light of the depth of sin, that is certainly worth celebrating and remembering every year. Weddings signify the future joining of God with His people. We've been learning, in an Old Testament class, that the relationship between God and his Church demonstrate the relationship between husband and wife. Not only are weddings a ceremony of joy because they join two people in love, but they represent the perfect union between God and his people that will take place with the second coming of Christ. That's also certainly worth celebrating our butts off over.
So how do we gain this ability to rejoice? How do we become joyful people? Can we replace our cynicism and bitterness with genuine, brilliant joy? And not just child-like wonder, or trite "taking joy in the small things," but taking joy in the big things in life, being overwhelmed. Of course we can take joy in the small things because we know that even seemingly bad things work out for God's glory, and for our ultimate good. But really believing that God is good, and taking pure joy in seeing him at work in our lives, that requires expelling this endemic and en vogue cynicism that pervades our culture.
The Old Testament is full of bad beginnings that God turns into good. Even the original betrayal in the Garden of Eden, God turned into an opportunity to express his vast love for us by providing salvation - first through sacrifices and then, ultimately, through his Son. David and Bathsheba were a bad beginning that produced King Solomon. Ruth was a Moabitess who manipulated a kinsman into marrying her, and she is King David's great, great grandmother. Even that the Moabites had a play in God's plan for salvation, is evidence of His Grace - they were the offspring of Lot (Abraham's cousin who's wife turned to salt as they fled Sodom and Gomora) and his youngest daughter, who got him drunk and got pregnant out of fear that she would not be able to carry on the family line otherwise. It's amazing how time and time again God transforms bad situations into beautiful blessings. We must take joy in even these seemingly bad things, trusting that God is sovereign and eternally gracious, as he has proven to be over centuries of interaction with humans.
The mark of a true Christian in these times, is joy. My prayer this week is that God would fill me with joy, and protect me from becoming cynical and bitter. In the short term, I hope that I will be able to rejoice at my own wedding, relishing in the blessing that God has/will provide through my marriage. I plan to wear joy out!
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