Steve West - What I really need

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today is Tuesday, September 7th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Nick Eicher.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. Lawyer and World commentator Steve West now, on gaining joy, which is really all you need.

STEVE WEST, COMMENTATOR: At lunch a couple days ago, a friend asked, “Do you have any spiritual needs?” I looked away from his searching face. I had to think about it for a moment. It’s not a question you hear a lot, particularly from one man to another.

“Joy,” I finally said. “I need the joy of the Lord. Scripture says ‘Rejoice in the Lord always,’ but how do I do that?”

Joy does not equate to happiness. Joy is a depth charge, exploding underneath, reverberating. Happiness is a flash on the surface, ephemeral. Bob Dylan captured it best in a 1991 Rolling Stone interview when he said, “Happiness is not on my list of priorities. I just deal with day-to-day things.” His interviewer records that he fell silent for a few moments and stared at his hands. Then he said, “It’s not happiness or unhappiness, it’s either blessed or unblessed. As the Bible says, ‘Blessed is the man who walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly.’ Now, that must be a happy man. Knowing that you are the person you were put on this earth to be—that’s much more important than just being happy.”

When my wife and I took to the darkened streets for a walk this morning, a mist hung over us, curling around streetlights. Mostly, we were silent but for the offbeat footfalls and swish of clothing, the occasional audible prayers juxtaposed with the silent company of God. We crossed a stream swollen with the rain from the previous day. We looked down at the hypnotic draw of the water. Floating about in the mush of my barely awake mind was that phrase from the first line of the Creed: “God the Father Almighty.” And then another word that the apostles use time and again of us, of me: “beloved.” Like a tiny jigsaw puzzle of weighty pieces, I put it together: The Almighty God calls me beloved. Jesus loves me. Though elementary, it’s a puzzle I must rework every day.

Happy? I don’t think much about being happy. Nor do I think much about being sad. But when I consider an almighty God calling me beloved, my brooding over the world and over me is riven by joy, by some inarticulable sense that I am just where He wants me, that I am blessed. C.S. Lewis once said that joy “jumps under one’s ribs and tickles down one’s back and makes one forget meals and keeps one (delightedly) sleepless o’ nights. It shocks one awake when the other [just doing well] puts one to sleep.” Yet by focusing on the tidal wave he missed the steady lapping wave of joy, the irrepressible love of a Savior who bids us come.

I told my friend across the table that sometimes, after being in a courtroom and having another regular reminder by a judge that I don’t know anything or, at least, that what I know is inadequate, I feel dejected. I am deeply aware of my inadequacy. Leaving the courtroom, I let the heavy door shut, take the elevator back to my office, and slump at my desk. I look at my hands, their lines and creases testifying to the friction of life and time, of water under the bridge, and with a sigh of relief say to myself, “Well, Jesus loves me anyway. Jesus loves me.”

And then I realize, that’s all I need for joy. That’s the keyhole to the light of eternity.

I’m Steve West.

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