The community that my wife and I moved here from was fairly wealthy. The population was mainly young, professional families with 2 incomes. When we first moved there, I remember being impressed by the fact that many of my neighbors had huge houses, a new car every year, and most of them took expensive trips to exotic places a couple times a year. This was at a time when my wife and I could barely afford to heat our home, resulting in nights sleeping in front of the fire place half the year and breath you could see while you were in the living room. The strange thing that I discovered as my years of living in that town went by was that many of those families barely kept their lives together. Many of the folks I got to know weren’t particularly happy. They divorced at very high rates, were in debt up to their eyeballs, and kept themselves so busy that they never had to stop and think about how unhappy they actually were. Mind you, this wasn’t everyone I knew. It was, however, very common. I initially struggled to understand the contradiction until a wise pastor explain to me the reason for this seeming contradiction. God made men to experience joy as a natural state of being. Joy isn’t happiness. It is something bigger and better. Joy involves hope, wonder, peace, and a type of deeper happiness that defies our mood. A person can be in mourning over the death of a close friend, but joyful at the same time because God assures us that He is still in control, has a plan, and can work things out for good. Joy is happiness that has its roots in eternity and God’s promises. It isn’t dependent on circumstances, but rather on eternal truths. This is how people were designed to live. The folks in my rich little suburb tried to find contentment elsewhere. CS Lewis wrote that pleasure can be substituted for joy, but it was a poor substitute. It’s a little like substituting a bottle of liquor for genuine emotional peace. It may dull the pain of emotional turmoil for a bit, but eventually you sober up and the pain is still waiting. Instead of liquor, these folks had tried to find happiness through new toys. Cars, TVs, clothes, and the like are nice and can make you feel good for a bit, but eventually, the newness wears off and you have to find something else to replace it with. This is an expensive lifestyle, which means constant work is required to keep up with the bills. That busyness came with the added benefit of keeping them too busy to think about the fact that they weren’t all that happy. Finally, they would travel a couple of times a year so they could reconnect with the family they drifted away from during the rest of the year when they were busy working. Unfortunately, 3 weeks a year isn’t much time compared to the rest of the time they weren’t spending time together. It was all a big trap. In the years since, I’ve realized that the joy God gives us is infinitely better than a Mercedes or a flight to the Bahamas. However, real joy requires work. It comes from close relationship with God, spiritual growth, prayer, fellowship with like-minded believers, and so much more. However, despite the difficulty and slowness of the path, God gives us so much more for our efforts when we choose to grow spiritually.
