Joy is at the Heart

“The most precious time of every day to me is that early morning hours, when the word is opened, when the hymn book is opened, when strains go through the heart to think of His grandeur, when Truth enters the mind. Make this the greatest pursuit of your life.”

“Joy is central to the life of a Christian and sorrow is peripheral. For the unbeliever, sorrow is central and joy is peripheral. This is because the central questions for a skeptic can’t be answered, only the peripheral questions can be answered.”

“Joy, which was the small publicity for the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian, and as I close this chaotic volume, and I open again this strange, small book from which all Christianity came, I am again haunted by a strange kind of confirmation. This tremendous figure, which fills the gospels, towers in this respect as in every other above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The stoics ancient and modern were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed his tears; he showed them plainly on his open face at any daily site, such as the far sight of his native city. Yet he concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He did not restrain his anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the temple and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. Yet he restrained something. I say it with reverence. There was something in that shattering personality, a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that he hid from all men, when he went up to a mountain alone to pray. There was something that he covered constantly by abrupt silence, or impetuous isolation. There was some, one thing, that was too great for God to show us when he walked upon our earth and I have sometimes fancied that it was his mirth (the laughter of God). And I fancy, that someday when we are in his presence, it will all be opened up in a way for which there was no earthly analogy to do justice to. And I believe worship is that clue that takes us into that mirth of God.” (G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy).