Longing for JoySample

The Story of Joy: Beginning

Part of the work of cultivating joy is tending to the story of joy. In his book The Story of Joy, Adam Potkay says we should embrace joy “on the path to nowhere.” Essentially, joy is a wonderful phenomenon in our existence but nothing more. This story says joy cannot reveal anything beyond the path since it leads nowhere. So, when we experience joy, we can say, Wow! What a wonderful emotion, but not much more. Is this really the story of joy? When you experience joy, doesn’t it draw on your longing to be on the road going somewhere? Joy beckons us to reconsider the nature of the path we are on. Perhaps the path is not leading nowhere after all.

In the Hebraic account of creation, there is a poetic, slow-growing crescendo. The Spirit of God hovers over the chaotic void. But then words are spoken by God and something comes out of nothing: light and dark, time and space, water and land; and along the way, aquatic life, animals, and birds. And at each pivotal moment, the ancient refrain: it is good, it is good, getting louder and crashing into it is very good as humanity is created in the image of God. The word that translates as good has deep undertones of joy over creation, and the word very is more like saying all that has been made is “powerfully, thoroughly, essentially” good. When God declares it good, we might assume God has made an assessment, that creation is innately good. There is an element of this here, but it is the inseparable speaking-creating-benedicting of God that imbues creation with goodness. And the end of all this goodness is the Sabbath—rest. This is shalom, a peaceful wholeness in which everything is right and good in relationship to everything else. And God, well, God is not distant and disengaged. God takes the time to delight in everything he created— including us. This is the story of joy.

The joy of the divine benediction that it is good, good, very good.