Nearly 5 years ago now I began reading a book by John Piper on how to fight for joy. I struggled with it, got about halfway through, and by Fall of 2004 I'd stopped reading it, just couldn't keep going. :(
But since October I picked it up and am trying again. Maybe I'll make it through this time. :)
You regular readers know that I have posted a lot here in recent months about joy, and what a mystery it is for me, both to get it and keep it. I'm still not sure what it is, but from John Piper's angle what it's not... is a state of being that one achieves and then maintains.
Instead it's a spontaneous gift that comes your way. It's like the "Ah!" reaction one gets from seeing something truly beautiful, the sharp intake of breath that comes with the wonder of seeing such a lovely thing. Your desire for that wonderful experience to repeat causes you to "put yourself in the path of where delight (joy) came before", hoping for it to come again, but never being fully assured of having it.
Now, on to Piper's argument about the relationship between desire and delight: he argues that the two are related symbiotically & experientially. Here's how: Let's begin with the premise that you love someone or something dearly, and that you take great joy in that person or thing. We'll call that "the Beloved." Joy, then, for Piper, is spontaneous delight in the Beloved, hoped for but never assured.
You regular readers know that I have posted a lot here in recent months about joy, and what a mystery it is for me, both to get it and keep it. I'm still not sure what it is, but from John Piper's angle what it's not... is a state of being that one achieves and then maintains.
Instead it's a spontaneous gift that comes your way. It's like the "Ah!" reaction one gets from seeing something truly beautiful, the sharp intake of breath that comes with the wonder of seeing such a lovely thing. Your desire for that wonderful experience to repeat causes you to "put yourself in the path of where delight (joy) came before", hoping for it to come again, but never being fully assured of having it.
Now, on to Piper's argument about the relationship between desire and delight: he argues that the two are related symbiotically & experientially. Here's how: Let's begin with the premise that you love someone or something dearly, and that you take great joy in that person or thing. We'll call that "the Beloved." Joy, then, for Piper, is spontaneous delight in the Beloved, hoped for but never assured.
For purposes of Piper's discussion, the Beloved is God. But the concept works equally as well if the Beloved is a vocation, an avocation, a destination, an addiction, a goal/achievement, a lifestyle, an experience, a parent, a child, a lover/spouse (or some combination of all these!) So, with that as a premise,
Delight is: experiencing the Beloved (what/whomever that is to you.)
Desire is: anticipating the experience of the Beloved, looking forward to more of that same delight.
Delight is: the experience... of desire being satisfied by the Beloved.
Desire can only truly anticipate a delight that was once previously experienced. The initial delight is always a wonderful surprise, and helps make the Beloved ... beloved.
Delight, when it finally wears off, creates even more desire. It is both cause and cure.
Now if the experience of the Beloved is over too soon, perhaps interrupted or interfered with, stopping short of satisfaction...
desire continues unabated.
Unless, of course... the Beloved comes and satisfies our longing once again, and turns our desire into satisfying delight as before. :)
Or unless... we cause the Beloved to become no longer beloved in our hearts. This is one way that people cope with unfulfilled desire, a way to stop short of despair, to get off the "D" train at some earlier stop:
How much better, then, for desire to be met - in the Beloved!
Unabated desire, without the longed-for satisfaction of delight, leads inexorably by slow stages from dissatisfaction to disappointment to discouragement to disillusionment to despair. The Ds.
Unless, of course... the Beloved comes and satisfies our longing once again, and turns our desire into satisfying delight as before. :)
Or unless... we cause the Beloved to become no longer beloved in our hearts. This is one way that people cope with unfulfilled desire, a way to stop short of despair, to get off the "D" train at some earlier stop:
convince yourself you no longer love. :(
Or unless... we continue to love, yes, but... with a substitute in place of the Beloved. :(
Or unless... we continue to love, yes, but... with a substitute in place of the Beloved. :(
How much better, then, for desire to be met - in the Beloved!
Even if it doesn't happen often. If it happens spontaneously at least occasionally, hope will still remain for desire to turn into delight again. Sometime. Maybe not soon, but sometime. And your desire will not go unfulfilled forever.
But when the days turn into weeks, the weeks to months, the months to years, and no delight in the Beloved comes to you, what do you do?
(By the way, this is what I'm reading about in Mother Teresa's biography, Come Be My Light, her experience of the decades-long discouraging silence of her Beloved, and her struggle against despair.)
So, dear reader, what (or whom) is it that you love, such that in the Beloved you've tasted delight and have been satisfied (only to find that after the delight fades, you desire the Beloved even more?)
If you have such a Beloved in your life, and you have chosen well in that, then whatever (or whomever) the Beloved is for you...
So, dear reader, what (or whom) is it that you love, such that in the Beloved you've tasted delight and have been satisfied (only to find that after the delight fades, you desire the Beloved even more?)
If you have such a Beloved in your life, and you have chosen well in that, then whatever (or whomever) the Beloved is for you...
may you find delight in the Beloved again..
and again.. and again..
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