joy on Complexity of Life

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we...

I’ve known a lot of people who have lived painful, tragic lives. When I was young, I assumed these people were abnormal. Their suffering was the exception that proved the rule that a well-lived life i...

We cannot be happy if we expect to live all the time at the highest peak of intensity. Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

Could joy, then, be a candidate for a one-word definition of the good life, perhaps in the same way some people think happiness is? Indeed, could it be better able to integrate in itself the requisite...

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

Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn't calculate his happiness.

Creation as it felt to God — since then every artist has felt an echo, a sympathetic vibration: a craftsman who squints at his finished product and reckons, “Very good”; a performer who cannot suppres...

The very nature of Joy makes nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting.

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.

Joy is a human condition which God Himself has designed for each of us. As we experience joy, we come to understand how it transcends the ups and downs of life on planet earth and offers peace and ass...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...

The context The parables we hear this week are part of a collection of parables of the Kingdom collected by Matthew in chapter 13 of his gospel account. As with the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7),...

Good people will mirror goodness in us, which is why we love them so much, Not so mature people will mirror their own unlived and confused life unto us, which is why they confuse and confound us so mu...

Simply Seek happiness, and you are not likely to find it. Seek to create and love without regard to your happiness, and you will likely be happy much of the time. Seeking joy in and of itself will not...

The only reason God would have had for creating us was not to get the cosmic love and joy of relationship (because he already had that) but to share it.

God created man for nothing else but happiness.

Joy is the foundation of our identity and our resilience. Our neural pathways are wired as a result of our early experiences of joy. Without a strong foundation of joy, we struggle for identity and ar...

Joy has nothing to do with material things, or with a man's outward circumstance ... a man living in the lap of luxury can be wretched, and a man in the depths of poverty can overflow with joy.

"God's joy," said by the Persian mystic Rumi, "moves from unmarked box to unmarked box, from cell to cell. As rain water down into flower bed. As roses up from ground. Now it looks ...

Intro These are incredibly rich texts. This guide recommends taking a detour through salvation history to put them in their right context. This helps your congregation expand their understanding of ...

A man who worked at an aviary in a bird park went to an outdoor wedding. He kept looking up until a friend finally asked him why. The man replied, “Sorry, I’m used to looking up to avoid falling bird ...

In Jonathan Kozol’s book, Amazing Grace , he tells of the struggles and sufferings of people in a community in the Bronx, New York. He is amazed at the courage and resilience he found there. He then ...

While the search for the divine has been somewhat crowded out in modern times by our busy and overstimulated lives, it is still one of the most universal of human strivings. C. S. Lewis describes this...

In the epic conclusion to the Narnia Chronicles, C.S. Lewis attempts to express the absolute joy that will come as our earthly lives come to an end and we are reunited with our God for all of eternity...

An Irish Catholic priest, returning to his old parish in the warmth of spring, was delighted to spot an elderly man he had long known. “Pat!” he called out cheerfully. “You’re still with us—I’m glad t...

The Christian life that is joyless is a discredit to God and a disgrace to itself.

In a commencement speech at Rice University around the turn of the century (the 21st century to be precise) the author Kurt Vonnegut shared some of the wisdom of his life. He went on to share a story ...

The soul’s infinite capacity to desire is the mirror image of God’s infinite capacity to give. . . . The unlimited need of the soul matches the unlimited grace of God.

Learning to be satisfied with what we have rather than desiring more, more, more— this is the essence of joy.

There are at least ten God-created longings of the soul:  1. To see my body as sacred  2. To be wanted, desired  3. To be loved without condition  4. To be intimately connected to God  5. T...