Joy – the last piece of my Advent puzzle.

My mental picture of joy is someone laughing, a childlike or teenage sort of laugh where there’s nothing holding them back. No mortgage, no bills, no job search or health threat. Just an unbridled, tenacious giggle that brightens a room, or that day’s viral video.

The problem with this view is that it isn’t reality. Joy isn’t always unbridled, as a matter of fact, the joy promised us is almost always bridled with something. Live long enough in this world, and it will teach you that you can only have joy when it says you can. You only get blips where you forget the present reality, and escape for a moment to a place where happiness is yours for a bit.

The world shows joy, the type I described above, on nearly every commercial from soaps to sundresses, mortgages to MilkyWays, athletics to alcohol. It constantly shows us a way or ways we can obtain, and sustain a joyful life. Buy more stuff, experience more experiences, go more places.

While all of these things do certainly spark a certain happiness, they’re not Joy. Not the Joy we are promised, anyways.

Joy is impossible to fully describe, and certainly not able to be contained in a possession or single feeling one gets from an experience. True Joy is something thats sought after, caught for periods of time, released and sought after again. Joy is never perfected, is difficult to keep, and is just plain hard work. Joy is knowing that no matter what, its going to be alright. Joy is giving up and knowing that theres a way. Joy is not letting grief stand in the way of a perfectly good day, relationship, opportunity, future…

In the first chapter of James, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds…” is a choice, not a feeling or great time in life. Its a choice to choose joy over anything your day may hold. God isn’t looking for you to string more and more “joyful” days together filled with things that make you happy and comfortable; He’s asking you to consider every day joy, every circumstance not just happenstance, and all crappy situations an opportunity to praise Him regardless.

Joy is a choice, a letting go, a state of mind knowing that His Love, His Peace, His Hope is always yours, never fails, always saves. As always, its all about ‪#‎perspective‬

Peace, Love, Joy, Hope although offered at a price everywhere, are really only truly found in one place, and for free.    Jesus, the reason for the season (all seasons actually)

**1 of 4 Advent thoughts written during trying times in December 2013