Recently, I’ve been blogging about heavier topics. Perhaps that is because I feel if you are reading this… it is because you need answers, and I want you to feel honored in the journey that brought you here. Yet, at the risk of spiritually bypassing all this realism, I do think joy is underrated. That, in fact, there is a type of joy that can keep us afloat in all circumstances of our life.
Some joy scriptures we hear frequently include:
- “Rejoice in the Lord always” (Philippians 4:4).
- “Do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is our strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).
- “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).
- “Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2).
- “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (John 16:22).
I love these verses, but sometimes they frighten me because I’ve experienced them in harmful ways—the sort of toxic positivity occasionally endorsed at church. Like having to find the silver lining in hard things, because God is good. Or feeling like Sundays require smiles that prove we’re filled with the Holy Spirit. Or rendering my struggles less significant because I’m not certain the person asking how I’m doing is capable of sitting with my pain. Or gaslighting myself into believing that everything will be okay… even if I really don’t.
Maybe you have or haven’t experienced the pain of forced joy. Either way, the Bible pins joy as a necessary source of life. Joy clearly can be striven for and received healthily—grounded in faith and reality, meaning deeper than happiness but misplaceable in fearful situations… because we’re human, not God, so godly joy is something to be perfected in, not perfect in. And as with anything that can be lost, this joy must have some way to be kept.
What does healthy joy look like? How do we keep it?
One of my favorite sentiments about joy is Proverbs 17:22: “A cheerful heart is good medicine.” I’m not a doctor, so I can’t recite to you all the medical evidence of this claim, but I’ve read it in articles, heard it through podcasts, and experienced it for myself. Something about joy holds the potential to heal you and keep you healthy.
Joy that feels healing to me is the sunshine on the pebbles outside my office window or hysterical laughter with a friend over the reel of a guy who thought boba could dissolve in coffee. Or hearing that my pregnant neighbor’s delivery was unexpectedly easy, or watching the sun blush as it sets over the sky, or offering a hug to a friend in need of compassion. When these things happen, I feel my stress dwindle and my heart embrace hope.
As Nehemiah says, I feel like this type of joy gives me strength.
One of the strongest people I know is filled with the most grounded, healing form of joy. Her whole countenance glows with the presence of the Lord. The joy she carries seems to be a recipe of delight, hope, and resilience. I can share my most vulnerable pain with her, and I feel infused with strength by the joy she carries—an ever-present confidence that God has abundant redemption for today, tomorrow, and the rest of my life. She is, in her own words, a prisoner of hope.
“Yet, at the risk of spiritually bypassing all this realism, I do think joy is underrated…”
Her joy, however, is grounded in her experiences of suffering. I’ve never once experienced her spiritually bypass my pain with encouragement. In fact, the joy she gives often lingers in my reality: “I’m so sorry you’re going through this. This pains me too and is unjust. I don’t think God caused this in your life. I don’t understand what He’s doing either, so let’s go to Him. Let’s turn our eyes to Jesus, who can and will redeem what was stolen.” Her joy anchors in a fierce hope that a Goodness exists to right every wrong.
I hate suffering and I hate verses that tell me I’m going to suffer, but whenever I spend time with this dear woman, she makes me feel that my suffering has the potential to develop in me the sweetest joy to be kept: the tangible experience of redemption, the promise for my heart that if suffering comes again, I can trust God to turn its bitter sting into waterfalls of blessing.
This sort of joy truly does come after mourning—when God takes off our rags and clothes us with gladness. It’s not just a feeling of happiness, but a personal experience, like Sarah’s when she finally feels the promised baby in her womb. Like David’s when he receives the kingdom he was anointed for, and Daniel’s when he’s delivered from the lion’s den. Like Mary Magdalene’s, when Jesus reveals Himself beside the empty tomb.
We rejoice always and grieve sparingly because our emotions hold on to the memory of past joy, past redemption—our own or others’. God’s promises are kept all over Scripture and in our own lives. Our joy is not foolish but founded upon the most impeccable track record of good. This joy can not be taken from us because God and His mercy and His redemption can not be taken from us. And when we enter a new trial or period of suffering, we count it all joy, not only because it will refine us but because God will redeem it so beautifully that it will only stack itself upon our history of how He came through.
I have only the beginning fragments of this sort of joy. It still flees sometimes. But when I draw it back to my heart and hold it tight, my heart and body feel more whole because this joy is grounded in reality—a divine reality that exceeds our wildest dreams, not only in Heaven, but on Earth.
That sort of joy gives me strength, and often comes out in the darkest of circumstances. It doesn’t often feel like being happy, or enjoying the present, or expecting the best for tomorrow. It’s like holding a promise in the midst of suffering, knowing it will be kept. Like seeing a distant patch of blue sky in the midst of a thunderstorm.
Like being set free by the truth that He makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him… and that brings me joy.