I was listening to an interview yesterday regarding one of todays cultural hot buttons and I kept hearing this word “Happy”. Doesn’t a person have the right to be “Happy”. I think at the surface level that’s an easy answer, Yes we want to be happy, who doesn’t? Here’s some discernment I have around that, because I’ve experienced and struggled with this on and off in my own life. Being “happy” or the feeling of “happiness” is often tied to our circumstances…When life is full of rose petals and puppy dogs, we feel happy. When it’s Monday morning and you woke up to a sink full of dishes and the kids suddenly feel like the lord of the flies, I’m not so happy. Happiness can be more like riding a non-stop rollercoaster. Ups and downs, flips and turns and depending on your lunch you may just end up feeling sick about it. So if not happiness, what? Well Paul tells us in Romans 15, “may the God of hope fill you with all joy….” Notice he doesn’t say “happiness” Happiness is rarely mentioned throughout scripture. But joy… You see joy is a steady assurance that God is who He says he is, and that Jesus was risen from the dead to take away the sins of the world. Joy is to stand on a place of victory, regardless of our circumstance. I look at joy more like a freight train and less like a rollercoaster. Steady, focused in one direction, bears the weight of its circumstance, not a lot of ups and downs. Joy is the understanding that our God is still the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. So whether it’s today, tomorrow or next week when your happiness is fading, let the freight train of joy remind you who you are and whose you are!! “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds,” James 1:2