I John 1:1-4
The human spirit is such that it craves joy as we make our daily journey through this life. The search for joy causes us to look in all the wrong places for our joy. Since the 1960s many people today have turned to drugs or some kind of product that will give them some kind of a short lived high. These false ways that we try quickly fade out and the deep misery of life returns because our ways do not produce lasting joy. We waste so much of life with this kind of search. One of my favorite country singers died last week, Glen Campbell. When Glen realized he was losing his memory he cut his last album, “Adios”. One of the songs on this record is “Time Slips Away”. We waste so much of the gift of time on the empty phony ways we choose to live our lives. How many people do you know that radiate joy? Someone sent me a picture of Charlie Brown with this caption “The smile on my face doesn’t mean my life is perfect. It means I appreciate what I have and what I have been blessed with. I choose to be happy”. The smile on Charlie Brown’s face is phony, for Charlie is a mess; a sad mess. His baseball team never wins a game. Charlie never gets a hit. He never wins a game when pitching for the team. He never is able to speak and tell the little redheaded girl how much he likes her. Charles Schulz created Charlie Brown out of his own life experiences and Charles Schulz had little joy in his own life. He made millions of people laugh enjoying Peanuts but he was a very sad person.
Most of the characters he created in Peanuts are sad characters. Linus is a little boy with his blanket that gives him his security but the real truth is he is very insecure and this robs him of lasting joy. He hates when Grandma comes to visit and wants to wash his blanket. Schroder is an elitist in his music. He doesn’t even have time for friends because of his music attitude. In one comic strip Schroder is listening to his radio and they play the number one song hit across the nation and Schroader turns off the radio with the comment , “The nation’s in sad shape”. Lucy is the self-centered hard case character that has little joy. In one of the comic strips Lucy is talking with Charlie Brown, “I’ve decided to go into political cartoons. I’m going to ridicule everything.” (That’s our news media today.) Charlie says, “I understand Lucy, by the use of ridicule you hope to point up our faults in government and improve our way of life.” Lucy says, “No, I just want to ridicule everything.” Peppermint Patty is lonely in need of love and friendship and spends a lot of time calling Charlie Brown. Snoopy is the only character that shows any real joy in life. He loves to dance and he even gets the hard case Lucy to join him in the dance that shows his joy in life. He kisses Lucy to get her to stop being such a crab
The source of true lasting joy is God’s gift to us in Jesus Christ. Sin and evil rob us of life and joy. Sin and evil produces the road of death. John wrote “He is the word of life”. This living word has revealed to us that Jesus has defeated sin and death and through him we have eternal life. The presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives gives us a life that experiences lasting joy. It is found in our worship. It is found in our fellowship with each other. The joy of our faith is expressed in the words of Isaac Watts’ hymn, “Joy to the World”. The second stanzas words tell us of lasting joy, “Joy to the world the Savior Reigns! Let all their songs employ; while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy, repeat the sounding joy.” When we have faith in Jesus His Spirit gives our lives the song of lasting joy. What kind of song is your life playing?
