Surprised by Joy...

The darkest periods of our spiritual lives are surprisingly mundane. I don't think I ever felt distant from God during the high points or low points of my life, but in the everyday droll I find myself completely alone.

Since coming back from ONELove I've felt very far from God. Maybe it took this long, over 2 months, to finally come to Him. My life is not at all what I would like it to be, I can imagine something a lot better; but, the this imagined life, should it become real, would be no less empty than this one.

Sometimes the best advice we can receive is the one we already know but have somehow ignored, the plank in our eye. A friend reminded me today that my confidence must be found in my position with God. Additionally, this past Sunday's sermon at Cornerstone reflected this. My joy cannot come to fruition by its own right, but only through its incorporation into God’s will.

This reminded me of Surprised by Joy, a book by my man C.S. Lewis. It’s technically his autobiography, though a pretty bad one by that standard. What it is really is a lesson on ultimate joy. At some point, maybe many points, in our lives we all experience a taste of joy. We do not immediately understand what we have experienced but we pursue it incessantly. We relate it to happiness and pursue the things that seem to make us happy. C.S. Lewis did the same and yet, like us, he found himself empty and longing. What he found was that he could never find that joy, but in surrendering his self into the will of God he found it. But, in finding it he no longer cared for joy for he found something much greater. Joy is the byproduct of our selves losing ourselves in God.

Throughout these past months I’ve sought out my self and I’ve found myself in want. Today, again, I try to lose my self.