What a great Christmas carol. Odds are we have heard or sung “Joy to The World” a thousand times. We may have even sung it on this Christmas morning. Yet, I wonder if we fully comprehend the word “Joy”. What exactly does it mean. Happiness? Gladness? Great pleasure? C.S. Lewis didn’t think so.
Lewis, a British writer and lay theologian, once described Joy as the “serious business of heaven”. C.S. Lewis, known for his works of fiction such as The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters, also wrote one of the best-selling Christian books of all time, “Mere Christianity”. It was a certain sense of other-worldly Joy that led Lewis to convert from atheism to Christianity in a single train ride across town.
In his memoirs, Lewis wrote that Joy must be sharply distinguished from Happiness or Pleasure. Pleasure, he said, is within our power, but Joy never is. Joy is something given, a gift. It is ironically an unsatisfied longing for something more, something about to be. Lewis experienced such a longing that changed his life.
Joy, Lewis said, is like a fountain of beauty springing up with such energy that if anyone tasted even a single drop they would never exchange it for all the pleasures of the world.
Joy, to Lewis, was a powerful word. Joy is never a possession, he said, it is always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still ‘about to be’.
“Behold, I bring you good news of a great Joy which will come to all people.”
The “Joy” the Angel spoke of is a Gift. And those who understand that Gift of Joy would never exchange it for anything.