Dallas Willard calls celebration one of the “most overlooked and misunderstood” disciplines.[i] He writes that “holy delight and joy is the great antidote to despair and is a wellspring of genuine gratitude—the kind that starts at our toes and blasts off from our loins and diaphragm through the top of our head, flinging our arms and our eyes and our voice upward toward our good God.”[ii] Further, Dallas writes, “Celebration heartily done makes our deprivations and sorrows seem small, and we find in it great strength to do the will of our God because his goodness becomes so real to us.”[iii]
This is why celebration is critical to our living out Jesus’ vision in the Sermon on the Mount when it comes to our relationship to our possessions. Celebration is “a wellspring of genuine gratitude.” The more thankful we are for what God’s given us, the less likely we are to seek additional things. When we appreciate what we have, we do not hungrily seek after than which we do not have. Celebration “makes our deprivations…seem small.” Whatever possessions we do not have, our practice of celebration makes that poverty seem small.
Celebration, however, does not come easily. Richard Foster writes of four obstacles to this habit.[iv] The first obstacle is inattention. We simply often do not pay attention to good things God has given us. A second obstacle is the wrong kind of attention. For example, we might pay attention to a sunset. But rather than allowing the sunset to draw us into praise, we ask analytical and scientific questions of it: why does the sun turn that color, etc.? A third obstacle is greed. Foster writes, “Instead of simply enjoying pleasures, we demand more pleasures-whether we enjoy them or not.” Finally, conceit is an obstacle to celebration. Conceit leads us to amazement at ourselves rather than amazement at our God and all he’s given to us. Celebration thus requires 1) attention to all God has given us, 2) with the result that we adore the Giver rather than analyzing the gift, 3) satisfaction with what God’s granted instead of dissatisfaction for what God has not granted, and 4) the fundamental conviction that it’s not our hard work that has filled our homes and bank accounts—it’s God’s great grace.
Take ten minutes today to celebrate some gifts God’s granted you.
[i] Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines (HarperSanFrancisco, 1988), 179.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid., 181.
[iv] Richard Foster, Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home (HarperSanFrancisco, 1992), 85-87.
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