Sunday, January 23, 2022
Joy and Happiness
Today’s post is the last in a series in which we visited scripture looking for stories about joy. These tales may have surprised us in a number of ways. We may have found our personal invitation to a disciple’s intimacy with Christ. Perhaps we have been fed by the stories of God’s love and joy in our existence. Or perhaps we have felt the Spirit’s joy that heals, calls and binds us together. In this concluding reflection, we gather our thoughts on joy from the last several months, and we contemplate how it is that despite travail and suffering, joy continues to sustain the human race.
Psalm 37:4: Delight yourself in the Lord; and God will give you the desires of your heart.
In recent years the topic of sustainable happiness has piqued the interest of many and two authors, Joe Loizzo and Sarah Van Gelder, have both written books on the subject. YES! Magazine publishes articles on the subject every few years and their website hosts pages “Peace and Justice,” “Planet,” “New Economy,” “People Power,” and “Happiness”. There is always interest in how to find and maintain a happy, balanced life style. Given current world events, we might imagine that more of us will be looking for the source and nourishment of happiness, and some of us might be surprised to find amazingly simple answers to what we believe are complex questions.
We have just completed a journey through scripture looking for the many times and places that joy has surprised the human race; and we have seen that while we assume that joy accompanies celebration, she is always found in times of great pain and great loss. Indeed, happiness is most intense in the deepest darkness; and her sister joy is most healing when our wounds are deepest. Spend time today exploring sustainable happiness. Listen to On Being podcasts of conversations with the Dalai Lama and others as they discuss the concept and experience of happiness. When we allow joy to settle into our hearts and take up residence in our very bones . . . we too, will know the real meaning of lasting and sustaining joy.
For more on sustainable joy, visit: http://sustainablehappinessbook.com/ and http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace-justice
For thoughts from Sarah van Gelder, click on the image above or visit: http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/7-ways-to-get-happy-without-costing-the-planet
Visit the On Being site at: http://www.onbeing.org/program/pursuing-happiness-dalai-lama/147
If this week’s Noontimes call you to search for more ways to encounter Joy or urges you to investigate the New Testament, click on the word Joy in the categories cloud in the blog’s right hand sidebar and choose a reflection, or enter those words in the blog search bar.
The Noontimes 