The Gigantic Secret

“Neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength.” — Nehemiah 8:10 (KJV)

Chesterton finishes his book with two pictures and one secret.

The first picture is of children playing on a grassy island high above the sea. As long as there is a wall around the cliff edge, they can run and shout and play every wild game. But imagine someone knocks down the walls, saying they are restrictive. The children don’t fall off. But when their friends come back, they find them all huddled in the middle of the island, afraid. They have stopped singing.

Chesterton says the teachings of the Christian faith may be walls, “but they are the walls of a playground.” They are not there to spoil the fun. They are what make the fun possible.

The second picture is about angels. Chesterton jokes that the great saints had the power of levitation, of floating up, and adds that they also had the power of “levity”, of lightness and laughter.

“Angels can fly because they can take themselves lightly.”

Pride makes us heavy. We take ourselves too seriously. Humility makes us light. We can laugh, and we can rise.

And then the secret. Chesterton says that the old pagan world showed joy on the surface but carried sadness at its heart. Christianity is the opposite. There may be sorrows on the surface, but underneath, at the very centre, is joy.

“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.”

He ends by looking at Jesus in the Gospels. Jesus never hid his tears; he wept openly. He never hid his anger at injustice. But Chesterton wonders whether there was one thing he kept hidden, something too great to show:

“And I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.”

Chesterton died in 1936. Christians of every tradition still read him for his joyful, fighting faith. If you remember one thing from this book, let it be this: at the centre of the universe is not a cold machine, but a God of overflowing joy. And he invites you into it.

One thing to do this week: this week, look for one thing each day that makes you genuinely laugh or feel joy, and thank God for it. Ask him to show you the “gigantic secret” of joy at the centre of the Christian life.