Find
Joy
“There
is nothing better for mortals than to eat and drink, and find
enjoyment in their toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of
God...”
Ecclesiastes
2:24
I had the great pleasure
of seeing Rob Bell at the Lyric Theater last night. His topic was
Joy, and he used as text the book of Ecclesiastes from the Hebrew
Bible. We all know the lines from it about time—“to everything
there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.” (3:1)
What we don't know, or at least I didn't, is all the rest of this
book of ancient wisdom attributed to the son of David, King Solomon.
Boiled down to its kernel, it says that he, Solomon, pursued wisdom
above all else for his entire life. He acquired great wisdom, but
found it to be no more lasting than anything else. “There is
nothing new under the sun.” There is toil and there is
suffering whether you're a good person or a bad one, and,
well...everyone dies in the end. Sounds depressing, right? But the
advice Solomon gave is this: in view of the fact of toil and
suffering, and with the understanding that everything dies and too
soon, we must practice joy in the moments that are precious—in food
and wine, in friends and loved ones, in our work and in our play.
Take joy where we can find it. In fact, he said that to not find
pleasure in life, to focus only on the negative, the suffering and
the pain, is simply evil.
Rob Bell spoke about
finding joy in the small things, for instance, the incredible beauty
of this Spring season, the colors, the fragrances. But also, enjoying
the absurdities of life—finding them hilariously funny. When people
complain about little, insignificant things—like their coffee being
cold, or the service in the restaurant being too slow—to greet that
with, “Oh, no! It's far worse than that! We're all going to die!
All that 'stuff' and money you've been hoarding—somebody else is
going to get it, and maybe THEY will know how to enjoy it!” All
the meaningless things we allow to control our lives, like status,
fashion, how we look, and, my particular favorite, “what other
people think of us,” qualify as absurd. Instead of worrying about
them—take joy in everything good that is all around us. We, here in
the United States, have the good fortune of having clean water
and enough to eat (too much, in fact). We have relative safety, and
yet we find things to kvetch about. Solomon called that sort of
small-minded ingratitude “evil.”
There is terrible
injustice in this world, and great sorrow, loss and bone-numbing
weariness. No force on earth can prevent natural disasters from
striking the good and the bad equally. We all live out our days and
die, no matter what. The very best we mortals can do is to bless
those experiences as well, stand with those who are going through
hard times, and when an opportunity for joy presents itself—grab
hold and hang on for as long as we can.
“I know
that there is nothing better for them to do than to be happy and
enjoy themselves for as long as they live; moreover, it is God's gift
that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in their toil.”
(Ecclesiastes 3:12-13)
Today, I hope you find
joy in the people you love, in the small things and absurdities of
life, in your work and in your play, and in this beautiful world that
surrounds and enlivens you.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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