Gilbert Keith Chesterton, a great and merry soul, called joy the gigantic secret of the Christian life. Near the end of his classic, beautiful book Orthodoxy, he writes on the veiled joy he finds in Jesus:
“The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something… There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”
And one day we’ll not only see that mirth fully revealed but then also live fully in it.
Squinch 
Here has the joy gone? I was enjoying the series of posts and now I’m missing them. I want to hear about hiking, elk and stuff you’re reading and what ever. No slacking man – joy is hard work!