These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
In American society today, we have a tendency to minimize words. We see words that are almost the same as other words, and attempt to combine them, to make them mean the same thing.
An example of this is happiness and joy.
These are both emotions that are similar to each other, but in their similarities lay a wide expanse of differences that makes all the difference in the world.
When it comes down to it, happiness is an immediate emotion. It's responsive from some external stimulus. Things make you happy. Events make you happy. Even people can make you happy.
But that happiness is ephemeral. Fleeting. The way our mind works, is that that spike of happiness is quickly processed and functionally dismissed. We see it, feel it, and are ready to move onto the next thing that can make us feel it.
Joy though, is an abiding emotion. It's harder to find, and harder to maintain, primarily because it comes from not from something that we do, but from who we are. From when we are at peace with ourselves and with God. It comes from that stillness of the soul when we commune with God.
It's hard to have joy in your life. It's something that you have to actively desire, to actively want, and to try for.
Compare that to happiness, which is easy to find. Anything can give you a nice jolt of happiness. A joke. Seeing someone for the first time in a while. Sex. Music. Completed a hard task. Movies. Drugs. But that happiness is a lie, a falsehood. It is a pale imitation of true joy.
And if joy is so hard to find. So hard to maintain and keep and nurture, why bother? And the answer is because Christ wants it of us. consider the quoted verse from John that's listed above. Those final words "and that your joy may be made full."
That's Christ exhorting believers into joy. He taught us that loving, and being loved by, God is the ideal perfect form of humanity. And through that love, through knowing His love, and loving Him in turn, we find the joy of life and Him. That perfect form provides a deep abiding satisfaction, a joy, in the depths of our soul that flows forth, and touches everything in our lives.
Galatians 5:22 describes joy as a fruit of the spirit. When we love God, when we bask in the light and warmth of His love, then just like a flowering plant, we create those fruits.
And that brings us to the shortcut to joy. For finding joy is hard, Searching for it within your own self is nigh impossible. Yet, if we take that simple step of loving God, then its there waiting for us, like a ripened strawberry waiting to be picked.
Journal Prompt: What do you think about when you consider the concept of joy
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