We are tiny, seemingly insignificant individuals on a planet swirling in the vastness of the universe. And yet, incredibly, we each have an incongruous capacity for joy. It seems we should know our place, recognizing that we’re not that important. We should be content with living our lives, not being very valuable or happy, and then just passing away like the billions who have before us. After all, we live for a mere 70 years on a planet among billions; common sense would teach us to be content in our place in the universe.
Yet we aren’t. We have this impulsive desire for purpose, peace, and Something More. We search for meaning and massive Joy.
But for most, this Joy eludes us. Life is a story of discontentment and dissatisfaction. Why? Because, understandably by default, since it is our Joy we’re searching for, we think we can find and provide it for ourselves. Moreover, we assume, since it is so incongruous to who we seem to be, that it will be found in us transcending our small place by being made much of. We think that if people recognize our accomplishments and achievements, our giftings and talents, especially in a world where there are so many of us, then we’ll be happy. We look at the vastness of the world, with its billions of people, and feel that if they were to look at me, then I’d be distinct, known, and happy. If others lauded our success, our significance, our selves then we’d obtain this elusive Joy.
But then it happens and the Joy isn’t there. We taste fame. And whether it be “small” fame like being recognized among a few peers or “large” fame like being lauded in the media, it doesn’t matter: the absence of such Joy remains. The being-made-much-of doesn’t work. Why? Because no matter the size of the recognition, we’re still too small, our accomplishments are too fleeting, our successes are too unspectacular, and our talents are too trivial to give us that Joy we’re looking for.
And so we’re left with only one conclusion: It must be found elsewhere. Perhaps we’re trying to find satisfaction of our Joy-thirst from a raindrop when an endless, pure-water ocean is available to us?
C.S. Lewis famously spoke about how he previously was bothered by God in the psalms constantly asking for praise. Lewis thought it sounded somewhat pathetic. Why would God be so vain as to ask little creatures like us to praise him? He’s content and forever blessed, so why would he be so fixated on us praising him?
Lewis answered,
“But the most obvious fact about praise — whether of God or anything — strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honor. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise…The world rings with praise — lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favorite game…I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: ‘Isn’t she lovely? Wasn’t it glorious? Don’t you think that magnificent?’…My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regard the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can’t help doing, about everything else we value.” (Reflections on the Psalms, 109-110)
In other words, Lewis found that God commands us to praise him because he knows it is good for us. God knows he is supremely valuable and he knows that we have Joy when we recognize and praise his value. This is true and deep to how we work as human beings.
But I think we can’t stop there: It’s not only that God knows praising him will give us better, supremely valuable Joy (which is Lewis’s point); it’s also that God knows that he’ll give us more Joy. It’s about quality of Joy (Lewis’s point) and quantity of Joy. God knows that fixating on him is the only way to fill this incongruously-sized capacity for joy we each have. When we try to fill our Joy-capacity with self-centered joy, it doesn’t work because such base joy isn’t valuable enough. And when we try to fill our Joy-capacity will self-centered joy, it doesn’t work because such base joy isn’t enough.
Looking to our own accomplishments, talents, and selves for Joy is like being thirsty and sucking a drop of dirty water. Meanwhile, God is like a pure-water ocean, and praising him is drinking from such an ocean.
This is why the psalmists say things like,
- “My soul makes it boast in the Lord; let the humble hear and be glad. Oh, magnify the Lord with me, and let us exalt his name together…Blessed [or, happy] is the man who takes refuge in him” (Psalm 34:2-3, 8)
- “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you!” (Psalm 70:4)
- “Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, that we may rejoice and be glad all our days” (Psalm 90:14)
One of the secrets of the Bible and Christianity is that there is a wellspring of that Joy we’re searching for. It’s a secret not because people can’t know it, but because they don’t.
From beginning to end the Bible is clear that that our capacity for Joy is incongruous. We are small; God made us this way and in his word testifies to that. But as small as we are, we each have a desire for something large, larger than ourselves. We tiny individuals were created to be swept up into something tremendous, something bigger than we’d think we’d be able to handle, into a Joy that literally will take forever to know and experience (Psalm 16:11, John 17:3).
God therefore truly is our Joy—and our only true Joy. We, with our incongruously-sized capacities for Joy, can’t have it any other way.
So ask yourself: What will bring you true Joy? Rejoicing in your small self, with your fleeting achievements and accomplishments—things that mostly are forgotten and not impactful, things that the Bible says are like a raindrop which evaporates like mist (James 4:14). Or rejoicing in him, the boundless ocean of beauty, greatness, and love?
In our search for satisfaction for that incongruous Joy, may we run to the ocean, not the raindrop.
