Anticipated Joy and Experienced Joy
Sometimes it troubles us that we don’t experience more real felt happiness when we think of the perfect and endless joy which awaits us relatively soon. The same is true of the person who knows he will spend eternity in hell. For some, at least, they don’t give it a lot of thought. It does not greatly concern them. For them it is more comfortable to think about other things.
There are different reasons for this. Perhaps one reason is that it’s so completely outside of both our experience and any real knowledge that we have of heaven. Also, many of us are quite comfortable here. Then, too, we spend most of our thinking on things down here. We really have no choice: our daily activities require it of us.
As an example of this that we see in the Bible: Abraham spent one hundred years living in a tent. In Hebrews we read that he was willing to do so because he was looking forward to a city. This home would be for ever compared to which the hundred years would be less than nothing. Now I can’t imagine that he woke up every morning dancing for joy because he was looking forward to that glorious home of the future, especially after a sleepless night chasing the cows out of Abimelech’s corn. Even so great a saint as Fanny Crosby wrote in one of her hymns:
There are depths of love that I cannot know
Till I cross the narrow sea
There are heights of joy that I may not reach
Till I rest in peace with Thee
But when all is said it is certainly better to live knowing that infinite, eternal joy will be my experience even though we now live only in anticipation of it. A good passage to think on is found in the I Peter:3-6. Verse four reads: “wherein ye greatly rejoice” that is in the hope of heaven. Verse 6 talks of being “in heaviness through manifold temptations”. Neverheless, it is good to have the anticipated joy.