I discovered them with "Art of Celebration", and I was mesmerized by the way they knew how to capture joy in songs. The album literally sounded like what I imagine celebration to be. Their lyrics were real, their sound was energetic, and I'm a not-so-secret Irish fanatic (hence the Claddagh ring I got for my 18th birthday).
I was hooked, and so when "As Family We Go" was under my Christmas tree a week before I would see them perform at Passion and three weeks before they would be at Lee, I broke into my happy dance. (Not literally. I don't dance.)
As I stood in the Conn Center smiling like a kid at Disney World while they jumped around stage, the thought struck me that more than anything, I wish I had that kind of joy. I wish I believed and loved God so much that it exploded out of me.
Not to put them on a pedestal because I know that's the last thing they'd want, but I saw in them real, true, lasting joy, and I was hungry for it. I am hungry for it.
I'll say now that I'm writing this to figure it out, not because I have figured it out. I've glimpsed joy and I'm trying to find a way to hold on.
About midway through "Joy of the Lord", God dropped a verse into my heart.
"Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart." (Psalm 37:4)Now, I tend to think this verse is similar to C.S. Lewis's interpretation of telling the pure in heart they will see God. David can say that if you delight in the Lord He'll give you the desire of your heart because at that point He will be the desire of your heart, so He'll give you more of Himself. He'll give you His desires, making them yours, and then He will fulfill them.
When this happened my emotions reacted, but I still wasn't sure exactly what it meant. I was glad to have a clear verse of what God was trying to tell me, but I didn't know how to apply it. I don't delight in the Lord like I used to, and I don't know how to get back to that place when I'm such a different person than I was then.
Then, after several Lucky Charms jokes and a joke about how it always rains in Ireland (it always rains in Cleveland, too), one of the band members said this:
"We realized celebration is an art. You have to choose it."Whoa.
I'd heard of choosing joy before, but I'd never given it much thought. Yeah, I did Ann Voskamp's 1,000 gifts things, and that was nice, but what was the big deal? What does it mean to choose celebration?
What if delighting yourself in the Lord is choosing to celebrate what He has done and who He is?
What if it means fighting self-centeredness by choosing to seek the Lord until you're in awe of what you see?
What if it means rejoicing always, even (and especially) when it's the absolute last thing in the world you want?
And when my doubts say that it can't be that easy, I remember what Christine Caine said at Passion, that so many of us are sitting in jail cells with open doors and unlocked chains simply because we won't get up and accept that Christ has already made us free, and there's nothing for us to earn.
What if choosing celebration is giving up the right you think you have to be grumpy, or angry, or selfish, and instead remembering that Christ has paid so, so much for you to be able to choose joy. Maybe it's remembering that we have much to celebrate.
Jesus is risen. He holds the keys to death and sin and shame and every single thing that you think enslaves you. You've been made free. And free for what? A glorious purpose on earth and a beautiful inheritance in Heaven. We have the work of knowing Him and making Him known, and then when we're done, we get to go home.
Home.
We'll open our eyes truly for the first time and see the face of the One we've served and sought for so long, and we'll hopefully hear those words, "well done, my good and faithful servant." We'll get to rest. All those voices in our heads that lie to us will be silenced, once and for all, by the voice of all nations singing the praise of our Father. I've felt glimpses on earth of what Heaven must be like, and it's only a dim, distorted shadow of what the real thing must be.
So yeah, what do I really have to complain about?
I'm headed home, and I'm never alone.
That's worth celebrating.
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