Complete Joy

Today's Scripture

It is what we truly want. It is what our heart yearns for. It is the imagined end of every pursuit of our lives. We plan, sweat, toil, concentrate and contemplate over it. There is no question about it, what we are pursuing with our every action of our lives is happiness.

I want to be clear about something though. While a 'feeling' of happiness, a smile, a bounce in our step, is an indicator - it is not the real thing. We can feel this fleeting, superficial happiness over many things, sometimes over things that aren't even good. This fleeting happiness leads us astray in our instinctual pursuit of the real thing. I like to call the real thing by another name entirely so that we can make the distinction. I call it JOY, and this joy has been the complete pursuit of my life for the past dozen years or so. In that time, I feel like I've learned more about what it really is.

Early on I settled on this view, and I think it still holds true. The word JOY has three letters and they stand for the three sources of Joy in our lives. The first is J and it stands for the joy we feel when we come to know the saving love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ. The second is O and it is the joy we experience when we truly serve the needs of another - because we know we are doing the will of God. The last is discovering the joy of using your God-given gifts. I often told people that if you found some activity or ministry in your life that allowed you to experience all of these at once, this was the golden opportunity for joy in your life. I stand by these thoughts and have seen it in many lives.

What I have discovered in recent years is this: there is a complete joy that is greater than all of these. The secret of it is in today's Gospel. Jesus says: “I have told you this so that my joy might be in you and your joy might be complete.” Hmm. What is Jesus' joy? Reconciling us to the Father. It is His passion and the reason that He came to earth. He wants this joy to be in us. How does this happen? We play some part in bringing someone closer to God. If that role is ever significant, then we will know 'complete joy'.

The way that we 'bring people closer to God' the best? By knowing the love and forgiveness of Jesus for ourselves, putting ourselves at the service of others - physically, emotionally, spiritually, and using our God-given gifts for these purposes. We put all of our joy at the service of God's mission. Complete joy is hard to resist - give it a try.