“Diligently persevere until you feel joy in it.”

That advice in regards to contemplating God is from The Cloud of Unknowing, an anonymously penned 14^th-century book which the Book Club began reading this week. (You can read that quote in context in this excerpt from the book.)

Persevere… until… you… feel… joy.

That’s a word I need this morning. Perhaps it’s for you as well.

Our theme this month is celebration. Today, battling a cold and a cloudy mind, I feel anything but celebratory. The temptation then is to focus on what I lack, what I feel or don’t feel, on the kind of man I wish I was… or to engage in some respectable distraction which, while tangentially related, keeps me from the clear task at hand. In short, the temptation is to focus on self and on self-soothing. 

Long before the unknown author wrote on contemplation, the Apostle Paul provided the remedy for self-focus: ​“Set your mind on the things above, where Jesus is seated at the right hand of God” (Col 3). 

And so I do that now, perhaps not how The Cloud of Unknowing prescribes, for much of that is beyond my current reach, but in the best way I can. I set my mind on Jesus, his work on the cross, his words ​“my peace I leave with you,” his promise to never leave or forsake, on the Father’s kindness to the just and unjust, on the gift of being alive in this moment. And even as I write this and turn my gaze upward I feel a spark of gratitude and joy — and that’s worth celebrating.