Eternal Joy
Recently my father passed away. This event has overwhelmed my emotions and made it difficult for me to access my spirituality without also experiencing grief. I like how C.S. Lewis described the cyclical nature of grief because I experienced it this way as well.
“I once read the sentence 'I lay awake all night with a toothache, thinking about the toothache and about lying awake.' That's true to life. Part of every misery is, so to speak, the misery's shadow or reflection: the fact that you don't merely suffer but have to keep on thinking about the fact that you suffer. I not only live each endless day in grief, but live each day thinking about living each day in grief.” source: C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
One of the unfortunate aspects of grieving my father’s passing is the anger I feel for the pain that he caused in my life and my family’s life. It is easy to speak of forgiveness until you are suffering because of wounds that haven’t healed and that will not heal until you let go of injuries. And then you think about how much time it has taken to process those injuries and try to grow from them and the cyclical nature of it all just never ends.
In our mortal relationships the feeling of love might conflict with the anger and hatred that we also feel. I feel like Christ juxtaposed eternal love with mortal love in his teachings recorded in the Bible, John 15. He said, “The world would love his own.” (vs. 19) I see that as the validation that the world gives us when we are injured and angry. The world of pop culture tend to relate to hopelessness, frustration with authority and hatred of anyone who causes pain.
Christ says, “continue in my love.” (vs. 9) His love, which is an extension of the Father’s, is not conditional upon what mortals do or fail to do. When he spoke these words, he was full of joy despite knowing that his fellow citizens would crucify him in a few days. He promised us “joy [is] full,” and even overflows. (v. 11) He is talking about an eternal emotion and he takes a couple different tacks as he tries to explain it.
He talks about being the “true vine.” (v. 1) They way branches are infused with life by being attached to the vine, so our ability to love is dependent on our connection to God. He calls it “abid[ing] in me.”
It begins with our love for God. He said, “I love the Father.” (John 14:31) Have you ever considered the idea of marrying someone because you love the Father? Have you ever loved a difficult person because you love Christ? It is a love that doesn’t have any relation to the mortal circumstance. In fact the submission of our will to the Father’s makes any mortal circumstance irrelevant even if it hurts. This idea may not be very convincing to the amygdala but the cerebellum does have the ability to overrride the amydala.
Therefore, abiding in His love means that I can choose to be loving because I love the Father and not because I love or even like the mortal in front of me. Jesus said, “If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” I take this to mean that those who aren’t connected to God’s eternal love are going to wither in the face of what mortals do to harm and destroy each other.
It’s mortal to be afraid of pain. When someone hurts you, he memory of that recurring prevents all kinds of future connections. The injury can lead to isolation and additional suffering after the event has long passed. Jesus submitted to pain. He didn’t fight it. He wasn’t afraid of it. He loved God that much.
If your love is conditional upon the beloved continuing to be kind and loving in every kind of weather, it will probably fail because no one is kind in every kind of weather. It is a love rooted in the mortal experience and frustration with the mortal experience is the root of all anger.
God, the Father, is the “husbandman.” (vs. 1) He fertilized and prunes the branches on the vine (that’s us). We fear and tremble. If we submit to his will without blocking it, we will produce fruit — the essence of which is joy.
Jesus had it and he desired that we should also have access to it.
“This is one of the miracles of [eternal] love: It gives a power of seeing through its own enchantments and yet not being disenchanted.” source: C.S. Lewis, A Grief Observed
I am not there yet. I can feel it when I read this chapter and ponder it’s meaning but in my daily life, I lose track of it. I know that fear has prevented me from feeling it. I am mortal and the eternal seems distant. If you have experienced this kind of joy, I would appreciate your comments.