Three Imperative Values: #3 Joy

I never seem to have a pencil handy when I hear wisdom from the mouths of babes, but I’ll do my best to recapture the moment.

My six year old daughter and I were riding our bikes by the Guadalupe river when, without any prompting, simply out of the blue, she commented, “Did you know that nothing makes me happier than riding my bike?” The wind swept through her hair as she pedaled freely down the trail, adding something like, “But in heaven its quite the other way. Nothing will make me happier than seeing Jesus for the first time because I’ll see his glory.”

In two sentences she laid out a vision for a truly Christian education. She identified her earthly joy, a gift of God, the thrill of her bike, and that joy made her long for the ultimate Joy, the glory of God.

C. S. Lewis also made Joy the theme of his own educational story in his autobiography Surprised by Joy. He describes three experiences that awakened “an unsatisfied desire that is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call [this] Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure.” Lewis explains that his Joy was brought to light when encountering poetry, and even a little toy garden in a biscuit tin made by his brother. In fact one certainty, based on Lewis’s account, is that Joy comes at unexpected moments.

At the end of his autobiography Lewis explains that after becoming a Christian, he understood that Joy “was important only as a pointer to something other and outer.” Joy it turns out is a pointer to Jesus, His Glory, and our Heavenly abode. For my daughter, the joy of riding her bike reminded her of our anticipated Joy in Christ.

An education must value this Joy, must nurture it. By sharing with children a broad curriculum of science, mathematics, grammar, great arts, Bible, foreign language, singing, nature study, and even hand crafts, a child is given a wide range of opportunities for joy. The teacher is a guide more than a lecturer, and she does her best to get out of the way to let the Holy Spirit, the ultimate Teacher, do His work. A truly Christian education believes in the kind of Joy described here, and facilitates a learning experience that gives children a wide range of relationships with God’s world.

Our prayer for our children should be “May my child encounter the Joy of Christ, by relishing in the joy of His handiwork.”