All Is Not Lost By The BrillianceSample

JOY

Morning comes with the light of Your Presence. 

What does it mean to love God? How does one love God? Read John 15:10-11.

1 John 4:16 “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”

Abiding and remaining in God’s love gives birth to joy.  Divine JOY comes when we are united to God, and God to us.  When we abide, we are enabled by grace to experience the fullest and deepest joy. How does one abide, or remain in God’s love? By keeping God’s command.  So what is God’s command? 

John 15:10 “If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.”

John 15:12 “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.”

John 15:17 “This is my command: Love each other.”

Love gives birth to Joy.

John 15:11 “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

When we practice loving one another—charity—joy is birthed.

Charity is God’s presence in the life of the wayfarer.  As Aquinas stated, “the necessary result of charity is joy, because every lover rejoices at being united to the beloved.”

DIVINE JOY manifests itself in right relationship with others.  JOY has a corporate and theological quality, and is not just an individual, subjective state or emotion.  Joy is meant to be shared.

Joy is relational.  “Joy is not only shared with others, and occasioned by relationships, but wells up from a sense of having received a gift from someone. In a relational context, joy emerges from a sense of resting on someone who gives; in such a context, having received—being a recipient—is not experienced as a debt but rather as the basis for joy.  In this way, joy seems inextricably linked to both gratitude and contentment as the baseline from which joyous revelations/epiphanies emerge.” - James K. A. Smith 

Joy is linked with GRATITUDE AND CONTENTMENT.

So what today brings you joy? Are you sharing that joy? Are you grateful for it?

We rejoice in the gift of this day.