Joy Postcard

"Joy is not necessarily the absence of suffering, it is the presence of God" - Sam Storms

I don’t want sympathy but I’m not that familiar with joy. I think that it’s common to place joy in the emotion’s category, but from my limited understanding, I’m inclined to list it as an experience. In a way, though, it seems to me to be a mixture of both and even deeper and broader than either of those labels.

In Galatians 5 joy is listed as a fruit of the Spirit along with love, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The way I’ve come to understand the fruit of the Spirit is that it’s like segments of an orange – it’s all the same fruit but with different parts.

The fruit of the Spirit is given to us as free gifts, but from my perspective, it’s a living seed that grows steadily to full fruit when we’re transformed in glory to the full likeness of Jesus.

I think that because I’ve been looking for joy in happiness, and not found it, I’d questioned whether I’ve ever felt or experienced joy. When I look for it with the perspective that joy is not happiness I’ve noticed it more. It seems to be more like gentle contentment rather than a loud cackle of laughter.

Like agape (unconditional love), it’s consistent and life-giving rather than transitory – or at least that’s the ideal!

There are more obvious occasions of joy, such as looking upon the face of ones spouse when walking down the aisle, but, I think, the real and fruitful blessing is finding joy in everything. That’s a tough call! No more tough though, I suppose, than finding peace in the storm or being kind to someone who doesn’t like us. Along with the rest of the fruit of the Spirit, joy isn’t easy, but it's a git for us to nurture and, through discipleship, learn to allow the Spirit to grow in us.