Seeds and Circus Acts

"If you make happiness or joy or peace your one aim and object in life, it is certain you will never find it; but if you put righteousness as your main aim, and if you become so concerned about righteousness and true living that you can be said to be hungering and thirsting after it, well then, says our Lord, you will be filled with happiness.  It will follow." ~Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

It is not an easy thing to be happy.  I am less than capable of convincing myself that I am happy when, in fact, I am not.  In the parable of the sower I am only too aware of the seed I would be, if not pursued so endlessly by a gracious and all-loving Hound of heaven.  The cares of this world choke my fearful heart.

Joy is not a natural state of being for any, certainly not for me, but I have tasted its tang too often to give up my hope in its revival, when thorns prick me on all sides.  Joy is too alive to be held back, wild, untamed life brimming with laughter and salt tears.  I hate pain, but I welcome the life that is its sponsor. My worst of times is my best of times in the middle of my circus act.  Apathy belongs behind the curtains, the shadows in which it thrives, but I am alive here on the stage and the acrobats throw me and the clowns spin me and I may even get shot out of a cannon, and life is the music playing overlapping strains above a multitudinous roar.  We are life's players, we circus performers, we poor but rich servants of an Audience.

I do not achieve joy any more than I achieve a handspring (which I don't).  I reached my particular brand of rock-bottom before discovering with the help of Dr. Lloyd-Jones, Chesterton, Dostoyevsky, and Romans that the fruit of the Spirit is not reached for from the ground, like an apple hanging above me.  I am grafted into the very tree from which the fruit is borne, and the fruit is therefore not eaten nor collected.  Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness...these become my own as I become the tree's own.  Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness.

"The business of the gospel of Jesus Christ, therefore, is not to reform the individual or the whole world; it is to take hold of us one by one and to bring us out of it, to give us a new birth, a new life, a new beginning.  It makes men and women children of God." ~Dr. Lloyd-Jones

Pursuing by-products of Christ is the world's way of helping: pursuing peace, or health, or happiness.  Meanwhile, thorns threaten to choke out that which is most dear, and I want to taste not just a fleeting savor of joy or peace or patience, but of life fully lived, life fully enjoyed under the Glory of God who lives.

Here is a seed that ought to have fallen among thorns.  Grace threw me into rich soil.

Out I walk along the taut wire, touching the sky with my outstretched fingers.  Next time, I will ride the unicycle.