HAVE YOU KNOWN JOY EVEN IN THE MIDST OF TROUBLE?

Today's promise: God will live among us with great joy

Have you known joy even in the midst of trouble?

We know that the same God who raised our Lord Jesus will also raise us with Jesus and present us to himself along with you. All of these things are for your benefit. And as God's grace brings more and more people to Christ, there will be great thanksgiving, and God will receive more and more glory. That is why we never give up. Though our bodies are dying, our spirits are being renewed every day.… For the troubles we see will soon be over, but the joys to come will last forever.

2 Corinthians 4:14-18 NLT

Too easily pleased

If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is not part of the Christian faith. Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

C. S. Lewis in The Weight of Glory

Quoted in The Quotable Lewis edited by Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root (Tyndale House) p 352

Content is derived from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation and other publications of Tyndale Publishing House