The chief end and duty of man is to love God and to enjoy Him forever.-The Westminster Catechism
Celebration is at the heart of the way of Christ.
Freedom from anxiety and care forms the basis for celebration. Because we know He cares for us we can cast all our care upon Him. God has turned our mourning into dancing!
Celebration is central to all the spiritual disciplines. Without a joyful spirit of festivity, the discipline becomes dull, death-breathing tools in the hands of modern Pharisees. Every discipline should be characterized by carefree gaiety and a sense of thanksgiving. Joy is the end result of the spiritual disciplines having functioned in our lives.
In the spiritual life only one thing will produce genuine joy, and that is obedience. Joy is found in obedience. When the power that is in Jesus reaches in to our work and play and redeems them, there will be joy where there once was mourning. Celebration comes when the normal ventures of life are redeemed.
God's normal means of bringing His joy is by redeeming and sanctifying the ordinary junctures of human life.
The spirit of celebration will not be in us until we have learnt to be "careful for nothing". And we will never have a carefree indifference to things until we totally trust God.
God has established a created order full of excellent and good things, and it follows naturally that if we think on those things we will be happy. This is God's appointed way to joy. If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will know joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, our lives will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.
Far and away the most important benefit of celebration is that is saves us from taking ourselves too seriously. It can be an effective antidote for the periodic sense of sadness that can restrict and suppress the heart. And it gives us perspective. Finally, it begets joy.
We can do some specific thins to cultivate the art of celebration. One is to accent the creative gifts of fantasy and imagination. There was a time when visionaries were canonized and mystics were admired. Now, they are studies, smiled at, perhaps even committed. All in all, fantasy is viewed with distrust in our time. But we who follow Christ can risk going against the tide. Let us with abandon relish the fantasy games of children. Let's see visions and dream dreams. Let's play, sing, laugh. The imagination can release a flood of creative ideas, and exercising our imagination can be lots of fun. Only those who are insecure about their own maturity will fear such a delightful form of celebration.
We can take advantage of the festivals of our culture and really celebrate. We can create festivals of our own, specific to our family.
