Be Mirthful

My sweet sister Annie texted me regarding yesterday's post on praising God and told me that it made her mirthful.  That made me smile -- bit-time!  And without even thinking about it, I immediately started belting out the first verse of Old One Hundredth:

All people that on earth do dwell, 

sing to the Lord with cheerful voice. 

Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell; 

come ye before him and rejoice.

Serving the Lord with mirth might sound a bit frivolous, but I think not.  If we look up "mirth" in the dictionary here, the word describes rather well the joy of a child of God who  knows implicitly that she is loved by her Heavenly Father and therefore completely trusts in His goodness and mercy and gladly does everything she possibly can to love Him in return.

According to Bob Mills, who wrote a chapter in the book Does God LOL?, the word "mirth" in Old One Hundredth was originally "fear".  It was changed to "mirth" in the Scottish Psalter to be more in keeping with the words of Psalm 100, on which this song is based.

Makes sense to me!  And so does this admonition from St. Théophane Vénard who suffered terribly before he was brutally martyred for his faith:  

Be merry, really merry.

The life of a true Christian should be a perpetual jubilee,

a prelude to the festivals of eternity.

Here, here!  Let the joy begin -- and never end!  I'm in!  How about you?