PSALM 126 Joy Ellen from Glasgow in her autobiography tells of her father. He was a Presbyterian elder. She writes, “He was entirely unselfish, and in his long life never committed a pleasure.” H.L. Mencken defined Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy!" I rarely meet such people and the stereotype is a lie. Take the 16 th century Puritans for example: “Actually, the Puritans welcomed laughter and dressed in bright colors (or, to be precise, the middle and upper classes dressed in bright colours; members of the lower classes were not permitted to indulge themselves -- they dressed in dark clothes). As Carl Degler long ago observed, ‘The Sabbatarian, antiliquor, and antisex attitudes usually attributed to the Puritans are a nineteenth-century addition to the much more moderate and wholesome view of life's evils held by the [Puritans]’.” The Christian life really is about joy: it is about a future joy that goes beyond anything tha...
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