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| PHILIPPIANS |
| Cheerful Sounds from a Jail Cell |
| Joy when its least expected. |
| Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord! 3:1 |
| Joy. The word has a quick, poignant ring to it. Yet it, like other words, has been drained of meaning over the years, even tapped as a name for a dishwashing detergent. Nowadays joy is used most commonly for a sensation like thrill. We think of joy as something you save up for months to experience and then splurge on in a moment of exhilaration: a trip to Disney World, a free-fall dive, a heart-stopping ride on the world's meanest roller coaster, a hot-air balloon trip. Paul had a different understanding of the word, as this letter reveals. When You Feel Like Despairing Philippians uses the word joy or rejoice every few paragraphs, but the joy it describes doesn't vanish after your heart starts beating normally again. Rejoice, says Paul, when someone selfishly tries to steal the limelight from you. And when you meet persecution for your faith. And when you are facing death. In fact, the most joyous book in the Bible comes from the pen of an author chained to a Roman guard. Many scholars believe Paul wrote Philippians in Rome just about the time Nero began tossing Christians to ravenous lions and burning them as torches to illuminate his banquets. How could a rational man devote a letter to the topic of joy while his survival was in serious jeopardy? In such an environment, how could joy possibly thrive? Turning Evil into Good Paul hints at an answer in a burst of eloquence in chapter 2 (verses 5-11). This pithy, metrical paragraph may have been a hymn familiar to the early church. In it, Paul discusses |