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In this upheaval we have a definition of joy. Joy is the realization that Jesus Christ has denied death its finality. Its sting is not fatal, because there is a boundary beyond it. When we glimpse that greater boundary on Easter we rejoice.

We also calm down, which is why Jesus uses the word peace to describe one of the effects of joy. Joy is not hysterical or frantic, as if by our constant announcements of joy we are the more sure of it. One simple "praise the Lord" will do, then comes the laughter. Just as Jim and Huck were saved by imagined smallpox, we are saved by the real death and resurrection of Jesus.

No wonder two disciples were glad and their hearts strangely warmed on the road to Emmaus. It is the joy and peace of both good excitement and good relaxation, the excitement of victory, and at the same time peace knowing that I can now put my weight down and rest in Christ's love and victory.

This is the joy that results from knowing the ending to the story, the ending that is better than anyone expected.

Lay theologian C. S. Lewis was fascinated with the word "joy." He offers his most complete discussion of it in his chapter on laughter in The Screwtape Letters, distinguishing between "Joy, Fun, the Joke Proper, and Flippancy."

Screwtape, a senior devil, speaks to Wormwood, his assistant: "Fun is closely related to Joy—a sort of emotional froth arising from the play instinct. It is very little use to us. It can sometimes be used, of course, to divert humans from something else which the Enemy [God] would like them to be feeling or doing: but in itself it has wholly undesirable tendencies; it promotes charity, courage, contentment, and many other evils."

He also describes the meaning of jokes as a sudden perception of incongruity, and helps us understand the harm that bad humor does: "Cruelty is shameful—unless the cruel man can represent it as a practical joke. A thousand bawdy, or even blasphemous, jokes do not help towards a man's damnation so much as his discovery that almost anything he wants to do can be done, not only without the disapproval but with the admiration of his fellows, if only it can get itself treated as a Joke. … Any suggestion that there might be too much of it can be represented to him as 'Puritanical' or as 'betraying a lack of humour.'"

His discussion of flippancy is brief and to the point: "If prolonged, the habit of Flippancy builds up around a man the finest armour plating against the Enemy that I know, and it is quite free from the dangers inherent in the other sources of laughter. It is a thousand miles away from Joy; it deadens, instead of sharpening, the intellect; and it excites no affection between those who practise it."

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