This Most Blissful Emotion

It happened!  The baby is here!  And this baby-wecloming, for the first time, found me in the hospital with Wi-Fi and the devices necessary for instant access.  There are up sides and down sides to this seemingly ubiquitous technology, and that debate should be saved for another day (she says, head down, staring at the computer screen).  The point is that with the entrance of our beautiful daughter into the world, we were able to immediately communicate that news to the waiting world (maybe I exaggerate), and in response we got dozens and dozens of well-wishes and congratulations.  And it was FUN.  There was so much joy in and of itself with the arrival of our baby, but it was heaped up—overflowing—when we were able to share it with so many people.  It made me think of Luke 15:10, “Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”  We are told to “rejoice with them that do rejoice.”  And so I thought: If I can be this happy over the physical birth of a child, what must God feel over the spiritual birth of a child?  And if I am encouraged by the joy of my friends and family, what must the party in heaven with the angels of God be like? 

Charles Spurgeon summed it up in this sermon:

Oh! there is enough in the salvation of Christ to make heaven full of bliss; there is enough to make us full of praise. Let us take up the theme; let us talk by the way to one another about it; let us talk to sinners about it; let us recommend religion by our cheerfulness. Levity be far from us, but happiness let it be the happiest sphere in which we live if we have little else to rejoice in, we have enough here. Whatever may be our condition or prospects, we may still rejoice in God's salvation, and let us not fail to be filled with this most blissful emotion.