Choosing Joy

Joy is often thought to be the icing on the cake for what makes life worth living, but what happens when we seem to lose our joy?  Like there's no real purpose, every day is filled with the same old, get up, go to work, come home, go to bed, do it all over again tomorrow routine?

We are all human, and life is daily full of choices.  Many of those choices we must make whether we "feel" like it or not.  Like going to work on Mondays.  I know I would love to have a day to sleep in way past the sun coming up and then when I wake up, roll over and stay in bed for the next four hours.  While I do love sleep, that's a bit unrealistic and not a healthy choice.  And besides, I know several animals that would be a bit upset if I didn't get up and take care of their needs every morning.  So, even when we don't feel like making that choice, we make the choice to get out of bed and go to work, even on Monday morning.

Joy is one of life's choices we must make.  We can be going through a rough time, having a bad day, ready to quit, but if we choose to trust the situation, we will surely see that the end of the circumstance holds promise.  Or, we can avoid joy, reveling in our negativity, complaining that life is full of sorrow, depressing, and full of despair and we will be destroyed by it.  It's a choice.  And we have the freedom to choose.

I am reminded of the life of Corrie ten Boom, whose entire family was arrested and imprisoned in Nazi concentration camps for harboring Jews in their home in the Netherlands.  She wrote much about the months she and her sister survived through three separate camps, and even after the death (from illness) of her sister, the continual joy in every circumstance was her choice.  She chose joy in a Nazi concentration camp.  And her joy became contagious.  She did not let them steal her joy.  What faith!  After a clerical error released her from the infamous Ravensbruck concentration camp only days prior to every other female her age being executed, she wanted to share what she and her sister had learned in those camps:  that "there is no pit so deep that God's love is not deeper still."

You are a treasure to God.  A person who has forgotten what God treasures will not be filled with joy.  Are we going to trust that life's circumstances, painful as times may be, hold promise?  Or will we be filled with despair and let it destroy us?  I need to take this one step further, though, and tell you that choosing joy is not just a choice we must make.  It's a command.  "Always be joyful.  Never stop praying.  Whatever happens, give thanks..."  ~1 Thessalonians 5:16-18  Puts a little more pressure on the choice, doesn't it?

Every day we face choices.  Every day we choose to get out of bed and face the day.  Don't face the day without making the choice for joy.

"Joy does not simply happen to us.  We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day."
~Henri J.M. Nouwen