worldview and perspective on Joy and Happiness

If I could just come down on that telling phrase – God wants us to be happy… but God doesn’t want us to be happy. God wants joy for us. But joy is something rather different from happiness. Joy is s...

Humor points to faith in that both humor and faith spring up in response to the reality of the paradox and the incongruities at the heart of human experience. But while humor responds well to the lowe...

Joy is the very foundation of reality. Joy is where life began and where life is headed.

In The Seven Storey Mountain , Thomas Merton describes his life of sin and his eventual turning to God in his early years. He despised and ridiculed the word virtue, which had come to mean “prudery p...

Considered perhaps the greatest guitarist alive, Christopher Parkening appeared to have it all. Signed to an international recording deal as a teenager, Parkening traveled across the world playing bea...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Structured Complaint The Psalmist organizes his complaint against God in three sections. The first two sections dramatize the complaint (vv. 1-11 and...

The deep truth is that our human suffering need not be an obstacle to the joy and peace we so desire, but can become, instead, the means to it.

Gracious God, we are called to be a joyful people, giving thanks for You and Your good gifts. There are times, however, when sin and sorrow grow, pushing joy to the side. We lose sight of Your grace, ...

is not just choosing to think happy thoughts. It’s choosing to clothe ourselves with an attitude of joy only accessed through the Holy Spirit.

O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty: Open our eyes to your gracious hand in all your works; so that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for ...

Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

Lord of Hope and God of all that’s new—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We’re filled with wonder, gratitude, and joy inspired by the gifts of new life You freely give us. There’s the joy and wonder of eve...

Hope is the power of being cheerful in the presence of circumstances we know to be desperate.

We are constituted so that simple acts of kindness, such as giving to charity or expressing gratitude, have a positive effect on our long-term moods. The key to the happy life, it seems, is the good l...

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Folks are usually about as happy as they make their minds up to be.

Maturity is the ability to joyfully live in an imperfect world.

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may seek truth boldly and love deep within your heart. May God bless you...

Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

Hear the good news: For the joy set before him, Jesus Christ endured the shame of the cross, taking all our weakness and failure. Jesus went to the cross for the joy of having you as part of God’s Kin...

Lenten practices of giving up pleasures are good reminders that the purpose of life is not pleasure. The purpose of life is to attain to perfect life, all truth and undying ecstatic love – which is th...

Lord, open our hearts and minds by the power of your Holy Spirit, that as the Scriptures are read and your Word is proclaimed, we may hear with joy what you say to us today. Amen.

In this excerpt, musician and author Ginny Owens shares a childhood exercise that only makes specific what all of us as human beings struggle with, the desire for wholeness: I wish you could know my ...

Harry Emerson Fosdick once told how as a child, his mother sent him to pick a quart of raspberries. Reluctantly he dragged himself to the berry patch. His afternoon was ruined for sure. Then a thought...

Leader: May God be merciful and bless us. May his face smile with favor on us. People: May your ways be known throughout the earth, your saving power among people everywhere. Leader: May the natio...

The significance and joy in my science comes in those occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, ‘So that’s how God did it.’ My goal is to understand a little corner of God’...

[Contemporary Research suggests there is] little correlation between the circumstances of people’s lives and how happy they are.

Existence is a strange bargain. Life owes us little; we owe it everything. The only true happiness comes from squandering ourselves for a purpose.