Bring The Joy!

The past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at words that come up around Christmastime—words that are tied to this time of year and a tradition called Advent. Today we’re going to talk about joy.

Happiness and joy may appear to be similar, but there’s more to them than just one being a stronger version of the other.

Happiness is a reaction. You just feel happy because something happened that you like.

Joy is different. Maybe it seems like joy is good vibes only, or acting like everything is fine (even when it isn’t), or only focusing on the good stuff and ignoring the bad.

Joy is deeper than that. It’s more lasting. It doesn’t ignore the hard stuff in life, but it doesn’t let the hard stuff determine how you feel.

So how do we experience that? How do we have joy when things change and life goes differently than we thought?

There’s a place where we can choose to look, where joy will always be possible. Not just around Christmastime, and not just when everything is happening like we expect or want, but no matter what.