Rediscovering JoySample

According to a study of human emotions, researchers believe that there are as many as 27 distinct human emotions. These include feelings such as admiration, awe, boredom, and nostalgia. They also include joy and sadness. 

Ecclesiastes 3:1 is clear that, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens” and then goes on to lay out both good (planting, healing, laughing, gathering) times and bad (tearing down, giving up, throwing away, scattering) times. 

Indeed, this is life—one day we are rejoicing over the sunshine; the next we are grumbling over the rain. And yet as we look closer at our lives, are there two opposite ends of the spectrum of the “good” and the “bad”—or do these mingle in a way where they co-exist? 

Scripture teaches us that they can indeed mingle together. Take, for example, Jesus, who, “for the joy set before him he endured the cross” (Heb. 12:2). Somewhere in the midst of the horror of execution, Jesus experienced another emotion as well—something akin to a calm delight in knowing that God’s work was much bigger than the current situation.

We forget that, don’t we? We forget that behind the scenes of our tears and sorrow and our anxiety and disgust lie a grander purpose. This, perhaps, is what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he said, “The years teach us much the days never knew.” Consider for a minute when moments of sadness and sorrow have paved the way for new revelations of God and of His work in your life. 

All of us experience sadness at one time or another. But what God’s gift of joy gives us is the ability to also take that hand of hope that God offers to us and respond by saying, “I am adding joy to this moment because Jesus is with me.” The evangelist Billy Graham once said, “Without dark clouds in our lives, we would never know the joy of sunshine.”

Sadness and joy need never be mutually exclusive. In fact, the more we worship God and understand who He is, the more we find that even in times of utter despair, the transcendent delight of God shines down into our souls. When Romans 12:15 says, “Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn,” we shouldn’t read these as entirely separate moments. Instead, there will be moments when our mourning is also tinted with rejoicing because of God’s work in the situation. 

What would it look like for you to allow joy to mingle with sadness? The two do co-exist when we have Jesus. 

Tomorrow, we will look at joy as “the serious business of heaven.”