Why “Solid Joys”?

The name Solid Joys comes first, and most directly, from one of our family’s favorite hymns, John Newton’s “Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken.” In the final stanza Newton celebrates the glory of citizenship in Zion:

Savior, if of Zion’s City
I through grace a member am,
Let the world deride or pity;
I will glory in thy name.
Fading is the worldling’s pleasure,
All his boasted pomp and show.
Solid joys and lasting treasure
None but Zion’s children know.

Secondarily, the name derives from a number of C.S. Lewis writings, in which he explores the nature of joy, pleasure, and reality. Perhaps my favorite is The Great Divorce, a story about a group of damned souls in Hell who are permitted a holiday in Heaven. Despite their best efforts to appear and believe otherwise, the lost and all their trappings are mere phantoms, almost figments of the imagination. Heaven, on the other hand, with all its inhabitants is solidly Real and lasting. To the reader’s surprise, each damned person is given a bona fide offer to remain in heaven forever. But as it turns out, the problem is not so much that the damned are forbidden entrance into heaven; rather, one by one, they find themselves unfit and unable to bear the stifling solidness, the uninhibited view of Reality that is Heaven. If Newton were living today and could read Lewis, I think he would conclude that

Solid Joys and lasting treasure
None but Zion’s children know.

By grace, we’re learning the nature of true and lasting joy.