“In your gift we find our rest,” Augustine concludes. “There are you our joy. Our rest is our peace.”33 Joy, for Augustine, is characterized by a quietude that is the opposite of anxiety—the exhale of someone who has been holding her breath out of fear or worry or insecurity. It is the blissful rest of someone who realizes she no longer has to perform; she is loved. We find joy in the grace of God precisely because he is the one we don’t have to prove anything to.
