john on Pleasures

I have a photo of one of my children: on a day of pure sunshine, he is running down the hillside, leading with his chest, his smile and stride wide as his speed picks up. Running is pure delight. Agai...

Ancient Lens When Paul writes to the church about struggles between body and spirit, he is not the first to join this discussion. Even if you limit the conversation to just the Mediterranean world,...

Pastor: Most merciful God, You desire everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. Grant that by the preaching of Your Gospel we may be given the wisdom that leads to salvation. B...

Lord—You are good and You are strong. You are faithful and You are loving. All that we have comes from Your hands: Hands that … hold us when we are weak, heal us when we’re wounded, protect us w...

Recently I was watching a children’s television show on YouTube with my kids, when the host asked, “What is the meaning of Life?” His response was typical: “I don’t know,” but what he said next made m...

And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pl...

Joy’s trick is to supply  Dry lips with what can cool and slake,  Leaving them dumbstruck also with an  ache Nothing can satisfy.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

People of our time are losing the power of celebration. Instead of celebrating we seek to be amused or entertained. Celebration is an active state, an act of expressing reverence or appreciation. To b...

“He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before—this sleek, sinuous, full-...

It was when I was happiest that I longed most. The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing to find the place where all the beauty came from.

But you take pleasure in the faces Of those who know they thirst.

The story is told of Socrates walking through the market in Athens, with its groaning abundance of options, and saying to himself, “Who would have thought that there could be so many things that I can...

"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...

Katja, our seven-year-old granddaughter, stepped in it, as they say. She had doggie droppings on the bottom of her tennies. Not just one foot, mind you, but both. Her mother, Maureen, suggested she le...

If we are saved by grace alone, this salvation is a constant source of amazed delight. Nothing is mundane or matter-of-fact about our lives. It is a miracle we are Christians, and the Gospel, which cr...

To crave and to have are as like as a thing and its shadow. For when does a berry break upon the tongue as sweetly as when one longs to taste it, and when is the taste refracted into so many hues and ...

Could joy, then, be a candidate for a one-word definition of the good life, perhaps in the same way some people think happiness is? Indeed, could it be better able to integrate in itself the requisite...

Your sorrow itself shall be turned into joy. Not the sorrow to be taken away, and joy to be put in its place, but the very sorrow which now grieves you shall be turned into joy. God not only takes awa...

We do not want merely to see beauty, though, God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to r...

Joy is a net of love in which you can catch souls.

Unsurprisingly, whenever we bring the topic of desire into view, our imaginations easily wander in the direction of sex, which can be as discomforting as it is arousing—but it is certainly not irrelev...

Where love rejoices, there is festivity.

Have you seen The Good Place ? You should. The afterlife comedy TV show, starring Ted Danson and Kristen Bell, offers a quirky take on heaven and hell which offers plenty of grist for the mill fo...

Gracious God, we are called to be a joyful people, giving thanks for You and Your good gifts. There are times, however, when sin and sorrow grow, pushing joy to the side. We lose sight of Your grace, ...

Taste and see that the Lord is sweet. He was made sweet to you because he liberated you. You had been bitter to yourself when you were occupied only with yourself. Drink the sweetness.

Thou hast but two rare cabinets full of treasure, The Trinity, and Incarnation: Thou hast unlockt them both, And made them jewels to betroth The work of thy creation Unto thy self in everlasting pleas...

Work and let him give the fruits therefore! Rule, and let him prosper it! Battle, and let him give victory! Preach, and let him make hearts devout!”

You, oh Christ, are the Kingdom of Heaven; You, the land promised to the gentle; You the grazing lands of paradise; You, the hall of the celestial banquet; You, the ineffable marriage chamber; You the...

While the search for the divine has been somewhat crowded out in modern times by our busy and overstimulated lives, it is still one of the most universal of human strivings. C. S. Lewis describes this...