Serious Business

 If you were to ask a group of thirty odd randomly people what is Christianity all about, I seriously doubt any of them would give as their answer knowing the deepest forms of joy.

Jesus informed His disciples that He taught them what He did so that their joy may be truly complete.

C S Lewis noted that our becoming truly rooted in this particular gift, however, is the true, profound business of heaven - but keeping to the place where this is vitally true isn't a easy thing. Recall the story of Mary and Marta and Lazarus. When death falls upon their lives, the narrative informs us that Jesus deliberately delayed comping to them until that death had reached its full conclusion, putting Lazarus in the grave for several days. Not a situation any of us would in any way view as the harbinger of unbound joy. Heavenly joy, however, is something that vastly exceeds the bounds of our own current longings and expectations.

What follows, as Lazarus is freed from physical death, is a clear realisation that with God, the putting aside of our mortal bodies is merely a transition to the place where we reside until what was merely mortal is clothed with the flesh of immortality - the implementation of a restored creation that never fades or wares out.

We are creates created filled with desires, and the truth is that God wants us to delight in His investing of us in this fashion in our fellowship with Him so that He can bring these longings to their true and fullest fruition within His creative work (Psalm 37:4). This involves shaping us and the world around us in such a fashion that even through the deepest times of trouble and pain, the fruit that is produced from this will be something which eternally endures because it is endowed with an everlasting virtue of genuine and unfading joy which will come to mark us as creatures enterally freed by His astonishing love and righteousness.

Eternity will be the realm where those spenders we have barely begun to grasp and comprehend are given their fullest, most enduring and truly enriching expression, because there our joy will be eternally full, as it flows and returns to the makes, saviour and maintainer of our being - the dear Lord Jesus.