Get a Kick Out of Your Faith

"O come, let us sing to the Lord; let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation" (Psalm 95:1).

Do you enjoy being a Christian, or does your religion take all the fun out of life for you? If you are not getting a kick out of Christianity maybe there's something wrong with you and not your religion. The poet Robert Louis Stevenson put it this way:

If I have faltered more or less
In my great task of happiness;
If I have moved among my race
And shown no glorious morning face;
If beams from happy human eyes
Have moved me not; if morning skies,
Books, and my food, and summer rain
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain:—
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take
And stab my spirit broad awake.

The Bible, too, is a book of joy. Christ came into the world with angels singing a hymn of joy in the sky. When he arose from the dead his followers were too happy to utter a sound. Then gradually his praises filled the earth.

Long-faced religion? Far from it if you follow Christ. God didn't send him down here to give us a bad time. He came to show us what real happiness is. It is the happiness that comes from finding out that God is big enough to fill the universe and small enough to dwell in our hearts. It takes a bit of doing, but he does it.

When I feel sad, O Christ, tickle my spirit with a spear of sunlight.