Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. It is a choice based on the knowledge that we belong to God and have found in God our refuge and our safety and that nothing, not even death, can take God away from us.
Interpretation
Joy is a conscious choice that requires daily commitment and faith.
This quote emphasizes that joy is not a passive experience; instead, it is an active decision we make each day. It highlights the belief that true joy comes from a deep sense of belonging to God, which provides comfort and security that transcends life's challenges, including death.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth.
The Christian leader of the future is called to be completely irrelevant and to stand in this world with nothing to offer but his or her own vulnerable self. God loves us, not because of what we do or accomplish, but because God has created and redeemed us in love.
The immense joy in welcoming back the lost son hides in the immense sorrow that has gone before....our brokenness may appear beautiful, but our brokenness has no other beauty but the beauty that comes from the compassion that surrounds it.
Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ. Our daily sorrows are anchored in a greater sorrow and therefore a larger hope.
To listen is very hard, because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements or declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They are free to receive, welcome, to accept.
Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)
Becoming the beloved is pulling the truth revealed to me from above down into the ordinariness of what I am, in fact, thinking of, talking about and doing from hour to hour.
Happy. And then I got afraid that it would vanish as quickly as it came. That it was accidental-- that I didn't deserve it. It's like this very, very nice car crash that never ends.
Happiness does not consist in amusement. In fact, it would be strange if our end were amusement, and if we were to labor and suffer hardships all our life long merely to amuse ourselves.... The happy life is regarded as a life in conformity with virtue. It is a life which involves effort and is not spent in amusement.
The summit of pleasure is the elimination of all that gives pain.
A grateful environment is a substitute for happiness. It can quicken us from without as a fixed hope and affection, or as the consciousness of a right life, can quicken us from within.
I learned you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again.
To see the ball, to run after it, makes me the happiest man in the world
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