Simply joy, part 1

All too often we equate following God with unpleasant duty through which we must drag our protesting selves, with tedium and dreariness from which we enviously eye the forbidden pleasures of sin. Life isn't always rainbows and roses - in fact, it is often quite full with sorrow and pain - but this caricature of what it is to follow God is so wrong and unfair that it makes me more angry than I can verbally express.

To know God is to know joy, and in His presence is fullness of joy. He pours out goodness and love over us, and crowns us with blessings far beyond what we need. Just think - the first miracle Jesus did was to turn water into wine at a wedding feast!

"This is not a case of people starving, as when in the wilderness Jesus fed them, or of disease and suffering when He in love delivered them from it. This was a simply a superfluity, a luxury; they had no wine, and what does this mean? - for it is a sign, and must signify something.

That God created man not merely that he should endure existence, that he should drag through life, but that he should rejoice; that there should be a happiness, a festivity, a gladness within him; not only that he should be reconciled to his existence and have what is needful, but that he should feel within him a music, a rhythm; that he should be able to say, It is a joy to live, He hath crowned me with loving-kindness and tender mercies" - Adolph Saphir, quoted in Earthen Vessels by Matthew Lee Anderson