I've been preparing like mad for impending ... doom? No, not quite. for an theological exam, actually. Which is about the closest thing to doom, at this stage! (So life is really very good, in my first-world life).
In the process, Herr Karl Barth reminds me to prepare for joy: the mystery, wonder, radiance, refreshment and consolation in the gift of life that God gives us. And to be ready for joy, even when it presents itself, as Barth puts it, "in its alien form":
"We think we should seek pleasure here or there because this thing or that appears as light or alleviation, as warm, benefit, refreshment, consolation and encouragement, promising us renewal and the attainment of what which hovers before us as the true goal of all that we do and refrain from doing. But do we really know this true goal and therefore our true joy?
God knows it. God decides it. But this means that our will for joy, our preparedness for it, must be wide open in this direction, In the direction of His unknown and even obscure disposing, if it is to be the right and good preparedness commanded in this matter. It should not be limited by the suffering of life, because even life's suffering (or what we regard as such) comes from God, the very One who summons us to rejoice. He has given to the cosmos and therefore to our life an aspect of night as well as day, and we have to remember that His goodness as Lord and Creator is the same and no less in the one than the other."
- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 3/4, p377.
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