Joy; A Quality of Life

‘In your presence there is fulness of joy’ Psalm 16:11

Those who think of the Old Testament as a rather grim set of writings featuring a God of judgment, a spot of ethnic cleansing and gallons of bloodshed might be surprised to learn that its most common abstract noun is ‘joy’. Some of this joy is fairly manic, it’s true – celebrations of conquests over detested enemies, sundry religious festivals, royal coronations and so on. On such occasions the noise must have been deafening – for a taster try Psalm 150!

However, as the lovely words above suggest, there is another kind of joy in its pages too. This is the joy of faith, a joy which is a quality of life rather than a response to events or feelings. It’s a joy grounded in the nature of God himself. The Psalter sees it as the proper approach to worship: ‘then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy’ (Psalm 43:4). In fact, joy bursts out of the psalms at every turn. ‘Glad with the joy of your presence’, ‘the joy of all the earth’, ‘the trees of the forest sing for joy’, ‘shout to God with loud songs of joy’. It would seem that the worship of the temple, while in its own terms solemn and awesome, was also exceedingly joyful. Perhaps that’s a lesson to us in our disagreements about traditional and ‘happy-clappy’ worship.

The people of biblical times lived, for the most part, hard lives. They worked hard, they were dependent on the harvest, they knew hunger, famine, war and pestilence. Despite this, the genuine note of joy in so much of their worship and praise must rebuke those of us who live in softer times, yet always seem more ready to blame God for our problems, even when largely self-inflicted, than to praise him for our blessings.

Abridged from his new book Old Words, New Life (BRF £6.99)