Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds.

James‬ ‭1‬:‭2

Would you like to know when I’m joyful? When I’m getting what I want. When things are good. When happiness abounds. When what I think I deserve solidifies into what is actually transpiring.

It is not when I’m experiencing trials.

Or am I wearing the wrong pair of glasses?

A similar vein of thinking escalated my addiction. I was then experiencing what I thought was joy. Until it wasn’t. Until it was a sour combination of terror and remorse.

What is joy? I’m in danger of equating happiness and enthusiasm with joy.

All of the above are good, but only one of them is tireless, boundless and supernatural. Only joy can persevere when I feel like crap.

And it’s for this reason that I’m fairly sure I we’ve misappropriated the word. Isn’t joy the hidden reservoir deep within that gives us the sometimes insane capacity to smile in the face of heartache, to comfort in the face of unending despair, to persevere despite our waning spirit, and to reach in earnest for our God when we realize we are specks of stardust in a gaping, expanding universe?

Joy doesn’t belong on a greeting card. It’s dirty with the fullness of our humanity and it’s raw with the glory of God.

God, fuel my heart with the joy that never expires.