Hello friends! Today we hear from a newer friend of mine, Keely! Keely is thinking about starting her own blog, so I was excited for her to write a guest post for me so she could taste a little bit of what blogging is like! Keely and I have chatted a good bit about this topic, and I think y’all are going to be really fascinated by what she has to say. She has a lot of awesome insights, and she’s researched this topic extensively before! So without further ado, I present you with her amazing post! 😄
When I saw this series on Ella Rose’s blog, I immediately became giddy because this
concept has been infiltrating my life on all sides for the past year. The hard part was
narrowing down what aspect of this idea of Joy or sehnsucht I wanted to write about.
I first heard about Joy through the “Till [the Romantics] Have Faces” podcast episode from
Classical Stuff You Should Know. When “the guys” (as their email refers to them 🙂 shared
about unique moments in their lives when they experienced what C.S. Lewis describes as
Joy in his autobiography, I racked my brain trying to remember any experience with the
longing in my own life.
I came up with nothing.
Until the last few weeks, I did not understand why. While I did experience the intellectual
acknowledgement of the different kinds of longing discussed in previous posts, I could not
recall any purely organic moments of Joy.
However, I think I figured it out. I was saved when I was four years old. I don’t even
remember my life before salvation or a time before I desired to be obedient to His Will. As
Andrew Lazo, a C.S. Lewis scholar who specializes in Till We Have Faces, notes, Joy is a
signpost to Love. To use the many analogies often referenced in regard to sehnsucht: the
longing leads to the Longed For, the blue flowers lead to the Gardener, the mountain leads
to the God of the Mountain, the creation leads to the Creator. When you already have the
One it all leads to, those signposts on the road to the Destination often just become
signposts.
Yet, over this past Christmas, I had my first true encounter with the overwhelming longing
and awe of Joy. For Advent, I read through a free downloadable study called “Incarnate” by
Kate Lab with integrated lyrics from her twin sister Sarah Sparks. It examined the coming
of Christ through John 1:14. I could geek out for hours over the significance of this verse,
particularly that word “dwelt” (which is arguably mistranslated) for hours, but I’ll give you
the quick version.
The word for “dwelt” here should be translated as tabernacled. As in, “And the Word
became flesh and tabernacled among us. We looked upon His glory, the glory of the one and
only from the Father, full of grace and truth” (Tree of Life Version). My Bible teacher pointed
out that the Gospel of John’s I Am statements portray Jesus as the Tabernacle of the New
Covenant, where the Glory of the LORD dwelt among His people temporarily.
Now, you may be asking where the Joy part comes in. Romans 1:22-23 says “Claiming to be
wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images
resembling mortal man.” Mortal Man, created in the image of the Immortal God exchanged
the glory of the Immortal for the counterfeit reflection of mortality.
Yet God, in His love, sent His Son to us. Immortal God exchanged the glory of the Immortal
for the reflection of mortality so that He might reach us in our foolish exchange.
Being saved so young, the poignancy of my salvation, of the glory Christ sacrificed to take
on flesh, to die on that tree for my sins, had never truly sunk in until reading through those
passages, until listening to the lyrics of “Our God Came Down to Us” and “What Kind of God
Is This?”
Our God came down to us. With our hands so stained with sin we could not reach up to Him.
What kind of God is this? What kind of love is this?
The cry of all humanity since the moment we hid in the Garden can be summed up in one
verse: “How long, O LORD? Will You forget me forever? How long will You hide Your face
from me?” (Psalm 13:1).
The longing of humanity is for the presence of God. The cry of the Old Testament is to speak
with God face to face. We traded truth for a lie. We cried, “How long will You hide your face
from me?” when it was we who had hidden in our nakedness of sin. He has not forsaken
us—we have forsaken Him. He has not hidden His face—we have veiled our own.
And yet, He loves us. He sent His only begotten Son to tabernacle among His people, God
with us. While we were yet forsaking, while our faces remained hidden, He answered
humanity’s cry of “How long?” by sending God Incarnate, our Messianic King, the One we
have been looking for.
God became Man. We exchanged Creator for creation, so He entered creation to meet us in
our longing. We spoke with God face to face.
We long still now to speak to God face to face again, as in the Garden, as in the Gospels. And
in the New Creation, He will fulfill that longing: His people in His presence, face to face
forevermore.
Image credits: WallpaperCave
This is beautiful, Keely! ❤ I loved reading your writing SO much!!!
Ikr! Isn’t it awesome?!
Aww thanks guys! 🙂