Joy

delight - gladness - pleasure - mirth - rejoicing

Joy can be a difficult thing to find.  Even harder to keep. And almost impossible to get when you're  searching for it. As 'cliche' as this sounds, I think its true: I think you need to find something or someone that gives you joy, rather then go looking for it.

I've been struggling pretty hard with 'finding joy', and let me tell you, getting more 'stuff' doesn't help. Filling life with more 'things' also doesn't help.

Anwyay, I was watching a program in which they followed the lives of 4 white, mostly racist Australians as they lived the lives of refugees, and the thing that I noticed is that a lot of the refugees had unwavering smiles. And they were genuine. They'd seen the horror of war, been stuck in a crowded, rather terrible units, often with confines of about 10msquared. And thats all they had. 10msquared, all day. Every day, but they were smiling and happy... joyful. I don't think there's another word to describe it. And I think it helped me find a solution to my problem, the words of one of the refugees say it perfectly (I wish I could say it in his accent, it was so ridiculously cool):

'We should not ask give us more, but give it more, give life more.'

So maybe, all along, I've been searching for more 'things to do' to make me more joyful, and just 'stuff' to make me more joyful, when really I need to 'give life more'. And so maybe I've been searching in all the wrong place.

'I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.' - Jesus quoted by John in chapter 10 verse 10 of his biography of Jesus' life.