My title is the joy the Lord is your stronghold, Nehemiah 8.10.

And before we get there for the next little while,

I want to make some comments about the theme of our conference.

Sirius Joy, Gladness and Gravity in a groaning world.

Sirius Joy, this is the conference about joy.

Sirius Joy, a kind of joy that you, as a Christian, experience simultaneously

with weighty reverence, we call gravity.

And simultaneously with painful groaning for sin, for brokenness,

for futility in this world.

So not just sequentially, first groaning, then joy, but simultaneously.

We call it Sirius Joy.

In fact, we define what we do at Bethlehem College in Seminary as an education in Sirius Joy.

We call it Sirius Joy because not only is it something we experience simultaneously with sorrow and pain and weightiness,

but also because it is central that is centrally important.

It's not the negligible caboose at the end of the train.

It is the fuel being shoveled into the engine of life.

It is central to God's very being.

It is central to God's ultimate purpose.

It is central to all Christian living.

Let me take those one at a time to up the ante on the meaning of the word Sirius.

Central to God's very being.

God has always existed.

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