Underworld
“There is none like the God of Jeshurun, Who rides the heavens to your help, and through the skies in His majesty. The eternal God is a dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms; Deuteronomy 33:26-27a NASB
Everlasting arms – “And, of course, one of the things we must listen for is joy. It’s hard to talk about joy for the almost superstitious reason that you might take the bloom off it, you’ll quit, you’ll threaten it, you fear it will come to an end when the demons come and gobble it up. But almost in spite of ourselves we get glimpses of you, and maybe glimpses is all we can ever have of joy.”[1]
“ . . . joy is knowing, even for a moment, that underneath everything are the everlasting arms.”[2]
Buechner’s comments strike a familiar note. As much as I want to experience joy (and as little as I do), I’m really afraid of it. I’m more like Kierkegaard, a man who declined to marry the woman he loved because he was afraid that if he made such an unbridled commitment to another person, she would either fail him or die, and he would be left with unspeakable sorrow. So he remained alone rather than experience the possible grief of loss. A sort of Catch 22 since the loss just arrived from another direction. Maybe that’s why I fear to be overwhelmed by joy—because it might go away and I will be worse off than never having known what it was like. Ah, our human logic of emotional protection is so convoluted, isn’t it?
One of the rules I grew up with is also something Buechner inherited. “ . . . This won’t last, because that was what I learned in my childhood, that good things don’t last, that there is always something waiting.”[3] Better to be the pessimistic realist than the optimistic dreamer. Good things don’t last. I learned that early. Be prepared to be disappointed. Life has a way of turning sour when you desperately want joy. Especially if you believe it will. A sort of self-fulfilling prophecy of doom surrounds even the best experiences simply because “time will tell.” As Buechner notes, it’s very hard to survive your childhood.
I read the Bible like this. A collection of stories of disappointments. We get expelled from the Garden. The world needs to be destroyed. Brothers hate each other. Even when we’re rescued, we complain and want to be enslaved again. The best of us fail over and over. Prophets remind us of our rebellion. Sacrifices don’t help much. And so it goes, until the Messiah shows up. Then it looks like we will finally know the peace that passes understanding. And he is executed! Once more the old rule asserts its ugly head. Don’t expect too much or you’ll regret it. Judas knew all about that. So do we.
Until we read those crazy letters and we find the disciples talking about joy and rejoicing in the midst of turmoil and persecution. What’s up with that? How can they turn the role upside down? Buechner calls it “a subterranean presence of grace.”[4] Maybe what I really need to do is train myself to be an emotional seismologist.
Topical Index: joy, grace, Frederick Buechner, everlasting arms, Deuteronomy 33:26-27a
[1]Frederick Buechner The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Your Life (Zondervan, 2017), p. 114.
Deep thought thanks. Skip, when I started to read this post, I brought a thought into my mind, which was planted long ago when I first became a Believer from reading the scriptures. Once I started sharing the thought with others, they questioned it, they wanted to know more. A pastor’s wife put me aside, and question me, face-to-face I said it’s just a longing I’ve always had. It keeps me thriving, and still does to this day. It comes from Zechariah 9-12. It is… you Prisoner of Hope. I love the content to this day. It leaves me with so many questions that the Lord not only answers but shows his magnificent omnipresence, in my past when I didn’t even know he was there. Such a fortress. I also find it a place of that same security come up when I go to prayer. I hope this is helpful for some, please read the passage in its context. Return to your stronghold a Prisoner of Hope, today I will restore do you double…. maybe this is why the shofar it’s part of the work that the Lord has for me. People know that is more than just a sound. In case I’m not joining tomorrow have a wonderful weekend, and enjoy the company that the Lord gives you for Fellowship. Shalom. B. B.
We were watching a movie last night and the guy had been through a traumatic experience. He said he use to think peace came from an absence of conflict but that true peace is in the presence of conflict. I know that personally I have run hard from conflict. My greater fear, I believe was that I couldn’t find joy and peace in the presence of conflict and pain. I think that is what the disciples learned maybe. To find the joy and peace in the very depths of devastation. It is very hard for me to chose to embrace pain. Any kind of pain makes me flee or do whatever I can to alleviate it. So instead of embracing others when they are in pain I try to solve their problems so I don’t have to experience their pain. It is a selfish way to live. I am learning though, to just let it all roll in on me an not run. I don’t think joy can abide in a place without peace, at least for me. So first I search for peace and I think joy will be a bi-product.
I am running, but I’m not in a race. Life is an unfolding journey to fulfill.
I am fighting, but I’m not at war. Life is an unfinished course to complete.
I am wandering, but I’m not lost. Life is an unpredictable wonder to behold.
Keeping the faith is less about competitions, contentions, and confessions and more about guarding, watching, observing, and practicing what is true, beneficial, and of a good report.
Some quotes of C.S. Lewis:
1. The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before. That’s the deal.
2. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts to us in our pain. It’s His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.
3. I should very much like to live in a universe where happiness and kindness abound and they always lead to good things. But, since it is abundantly clear that I don’t, and since I have reason to believe that God is Love, I conclude that my conception of love needs correction. Love is something more stern and splendid than mere kindness. Kindness, merely as such, cares not whether its object becomes good or bad, provided only that it escapes suffering.
4. You would like to know how I behave when I’m experiencing pain, not writing books about it. You need not guess, for I will tell you. I am a great coward. But, what is that to the purpose? When I think of pain, of anxiety the gnaws like fire, and loneliness that spreads out like a dessert, and the heartbreaking routine of monotonous misery, or again of dull aches that blacken our whole landscape or sudden nauseating pains the knock a man’s hearing out in one blow, of pains that seem already intolerable and are suddenly increased…if I knew any way to escape, I would crawl through sewers to find it. But what’s the good of telling you about my feelings? You know them already. They are the same as yours. I’m not arguing that pain is not painful. Pain hurts. That’s what the word means. I’m only trying to show that the biblical doctrine of being made “perfect through suffering” is not incredible. But, to prove it palatable is beyond my design.
Judy, thank you for reminding me. The Problem Of Pain kept me alive in my youth. It gave me the ‘permission’ I so desperately needed to own the pain I had instead of deny it. First step toward life: admit the death throes you find yourself in. Pain was a huge elephant when I first decided that I had to swallow it instead of run from it. I think each of us bears a cross made up of the debt of all previous choices of not only us but those who came before us and who surround us, too (or else what are “trespasses” but the sins of others that affect us?). We now have a puzzle: how to fix the consequences? Here, at “the end of all things” (Frodo) I think we are packing huge crosses! Huge puzzles. Tons of pain to claw through before we get back to even ground zero.
I think the world can only conceive of joy as the absence of pain, but if joy cannot be found in the midst of pain, I think we are all sunk. I have decided that joy can only be found when we figure out how to “keep our eye single-minded to the glory of God”: when we stay focused on the goal and keep the motivation pure to His glory. How is the glory of God accomplished in pain? How do we find purpose when we were born with the Quixotian complex of all those who came before us who didn’t know their purpose either? If we don’t learn how to ask the right questions, we will never stumble upon the answers!
We inherit the results of the experience of those before us: we also continue to absorb the conclusions generated by the experiences of those around us; and we are stuck with our own conclusions, too. I suffered from expectations about God, myself, others and reality that did not match the truth, but because those expectations about that all-elusive joy (that we all want, I think) weren’t “single to the glory of God”, they bore bitter fruit.
The Aesop fox decided that the fruit of forbidden impure expectations must be sour; therefore one must not desire fruit. Wrong conclusion! I think we need to change our (impure) expectations about joy. The world, the flesh and the devil all teach us that joy is about our own glory: we build our expectations on self, too. I think the grapes of joy will continue to hang out of reach of such thieves. Change the focus of self glory to the glory of God, however, and the entire vineyard becomes the rightful inheritance of the rightful workers in it, and the rule of the rightful workers of the vineyard? “Muzzle not the ox”. If we seek first the kingdom of God: if we seek first His glory: if we seek first to give Him joy and to please Him, the grapes of His joy become ours, too. The grapes of wrath? I think they belong to all those “little foxes”.
Can you provide the references please?
#1 is from “A Grief Observed (don’t know the page #)
#’s 2, 3,& 4 are from “The Problem of Pain,” pages 91, 32 and 105 respectively
An episode of Grey’s Anatomy touched on joy and how an experience – trauma caused this person to distrust joy. The story goes that Owen’s sister noticed his pattern of choosing relationships wherein he was unhappy, she recommended he go to counseling. Below are clips of this session.
Video 1 – https://youtu.be/bPaDooJ7fWg
Video – 2 https://youtu.be/EJP8t2lv_vY
Video 3 – https://youtu.be/JwrlYp1XNCo
I was a part of denominations that taught eternal security. Nothing could separate me from the love of God. Not even me. As I began to study the Scriptures from a more Hebraic perspective, I was confronted with the many Scriptures that talk about falling away. I was challenged by those that talked about persevering until the end. Now, I wonder if my choices separate me from experiencing God. I believe that many of my trials are based on my thoughts, my fears, my pride, my shame etc. No one in Scripture is rejoicing over their own sin. I believe that all the trauma I’ve experienced is a huge stumbling block to joy. If I can sabotage myself, well I really can’t trust myself. I haven’t had healthy experiences of love. I think love must come before joy. I believe the everlasting arms of the Father are supportive of those who walk in His Ways. His Ways are Ways of love and trust. I struggle especially with trust. I keep asking, seeking and knocking. I hope that one day I’ll trade in that sinking feeling of regret for joy. I hope that one day I’ll feel as though I’m living the life I was meant to live. I don’t feel that way now. I have not responded wisely to the bullies I’ve encountered. If I was being persecuted for righteousness, that would be one thing. I believe I suffer from generations of people whose lives were filled with all sorts of evil ways. I believe I am the biggest obstacle I face to experiencing joy.
Theresa, you speak for me, too! The bullies overwhelm us when we agree with them: well, our false identity of guilt, fear and shame agree, anyway. That includes the fear, guilt and shame from all those who came before us! My parents’ shame kept my head down and the target painted on my back for a long time. When I decided to take responsibility for what they never did or could, however, I found that an ENORMOUS amount of what I thought was ‘just me’ – just my own sin – was actually not really ‘mine’, after all. No wonder I could never – rack my brain and heart – find what to repent for! It was not ‘my’ guilt in the first place. Well, I “stood and confessed the sins of my fathers”: took responsibility for the damage I found in my life: and found I no longer was hanging my head: was no longer a target for the bullies. I think the spirits of people sense where the spirits of other people are at. When I no longer suffered from toxic fallout of fear, guilt and shame: when I had confessed for all I found that was not to God’s glory: all that was less than the image of God: as well as repented for all I could see of my own choices: those around me started leaving me alone. This was huge! In my real identity, as a child of the King, I don’t have to hang my spiritual head down in front of anybody. I think when others can tell who your Daddy is – when you have gotten rid of all the toxic motivational forces you got stuck with, along with their attendant fear, guilt and shame – their stuff stops picking on your stuff because, well, you don’t have that stuff any more. Their crispy critters have to go find somebody else’s crispy critters to play with.
You make so much sense! I have made progress taking responsibility for the damage I find in my life. I struggle now with how this has impacted my children and how I have not glorified God with my gifts and talents. The bullies have mostly left me alone. Now, though, I find I’m lonely. I left the fellowship of the church and I’m more careful about toxic people. I find myself alone with plenty of time to think about the years that the locusts have eaten in my life. I’m really hoping for restoration and community. I think that’s where I will find joy.
Teresa, The following words are in yesterday’s TW …
“In Hebrew thought, joy is the manifestation of divine purpose fulfilled, and since everything in creation has purpose, whenever any part of the creation acts according to its design, that part expresses and experiences śimḥâ.”
I hope that your new space affords you the support and freedom necessary for operating in your “divine design.”
Thank you.
The fear of joy? Really!?
Let’s give that victory to fear.
Isn’t that Satan’s MO . . . to get us to deny
all that is true in God’s creation as deemed
by our self assurance in our 5 physical senses
and their limited assessment of the truth?
Oswald Chambers writes today: “We make our
temperament and our natural desires barriers to
coming to Christ. If you will give God your right to
yourself, He will make a holy experiment of you.
In the life of a saint there is this amazing Well, which
is a continual Source of original life.”
Isn’t our biggest fear losing the right to ourselves?
And that is EXACTLY what we must lose to gain
Him — and His joy.
Another Buechner quote on joy that brings me comfort in my oft despair and anxiety is,
“God created us in joy and created us for joy, and in the long run not all the darkness there is in the world and in ourselves can separate us finally from that joy, because whatever else it means to say that God created us in His image, I think it means that even when we cannot believe in Him, even when we feel most spiritually bankrupt and deserted by Him, His mark is deep within us. We have God’s joy in our blood.”
The phrase “we have God’s joy in our blood” gave me pause. Perhaps there is a spiritual connection between demons which suck the joy out of a person’s soul and those fabled vampires who sought to suck the blood from the necks of humans victims.
I am going to check my neck in the mirror. Hopefully I’ll see my reflection …and God’s image.
Please provide the reference for Buechner. I lost some of his books when my bag was stolen in Milan.
Gladly. Sorry for the loss of your bag. Buechner makes for a good travelling companion.
“The Great Dance” in Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons, 240
Thank you for the word today and what a beautiful image of divine love, ‘and underneath are the everlasting arms’. It reminds me of what Thomas Merton said, “The light shines in the darkness but you have to enter the darkness to see it shining”. I’m painfully learning that to be alive pain & disappointment are part of our relationship with our Lord because we have an adversary that hates His guts and it is only in us the fiend’s head is crushed. And we have a great high priest that will reward all our pain with joy, Heb. 12:2.