If you have seven minutes to spare, I strongly recommend you watch this video from Rend Collective explaining the heart behind their new album ‘The Art of Celebration.’ It’s summed up in their comment “This record is an attempt to reflect something of the irrepressible laughter in the heart of God. It’s a call to the cynical to once again choose celebration over condemnation and a reminder to the broken that ‘the joy of the Lord is our strength’.”
Jesus said, ‘unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’ (Matt 18:3) One of the aspects of little children is their capacity for celebration and joy. They jump and splash in puddles. They throw snowballs with glee. They wade through piles of leaves with uninhibited pleasure. They run everywhere. They skip. They dance. Joy comes naturally to them: they squeal with delight over simple things; they chortle with pleasure over bubbles being blown and towers being knocked over. Their joy is infectious and makes us feel good.
As we grow, alas, we lose that capacity for celebration in the ordinary. We are wounded by others and so we retreat, building forts as defences. We fail and feel shame and condemnation and so we hide away. Our relationships are damaged; our self-esteem is bruised. Sin ruins and destroys. It’s hard to be joyful and to celebrate in those circumstances.
But God remains the source of all joy and offers restoration, forgiveness, healing, freedom. Far from being the miserable killjoy some of us imagine Him to be, He is the author of celebration: of feasting and festivity, of dancing and delight, of unbridled pleasure and unlimited joy. John Piper talks of ‘Christian hedonism’ arguing that ‘the chief end of man is to glorify God by enjoying Him forever.’ C. S. Lewis makes a similar point when he writes ‘We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinitive joy is offered us… We are far too easily pleased.’ (‘The Weight of Glory’)
There is joy available in the God who is ‘immeasurably more than we can know, than we can pray.’ (‘Immeasurably More’, Rend Collective) He is more than our sin and our shame, and therefore ‘We will not bow to sin or to shame’ (‘More Than Conquerors’, Rend Collective) – for if we bow to these things, not only do we give them authority over us, we give them the worship which is due to God alone. We can rejoice because of the very character of God: ‘In my failures You won’t walk out… In the silence You won’t let go.’ (‘My Lighthouse’, Rend Collective) We have hope because ‘by grace somehow I stand where even angels fear to tread’ (‘Boldly I Approach,’ Rend Collective) and we can know we’re free from condemnation, having grace as an anchor that will hold us come trouble or high water (‘Finally Free,‘ Rend Collective.) God is the source of joy and commands us to rejoice (Phil 4:4), but He also gives us the power and the reason to do so! ‘You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.’ (Ps 30:11)