The Joyful Faith

I accidentally deleted my blog last week, Google is trying to find it, but from the looks of it, its gone; I am not discouraged though because I never liked the name of the Blog that much anyway. As anyone who has ever read the old blog, the major themes that I tried to shoot for were Joy and Thanksgiving, because with all we have and all we can do, the world and most importantly our hearts are short on Joy. The reason I think its worth promoting is because of something we often forget, Joy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, and in my experience is directly tied to our Faith, our attitude, and our lifestyle. That its something attainable for everyone, as Victor Frankl pointed out in his amazing book, "A man's search for meaning," "happiness is not predicated upon your circumstances," "We all have problems, and we all suffer,".

When we are faced with the challenges of life, and for a lot of people, (me), the toughest part of life is how we see ourselves. We try and make efforts, but it seems so hard to make advancement on the road of virtue, the road to become the best version of ourselves. Faced with this, there's a few options, 1.) we can just shun the world, and believe that love and joy are not possible for me, 2.) Become cynical and depressed about life, and because misery loves company, bring everyone down around me; 3.) Or, we can walk as a child of God, and walk in that joy that most know as a child. The Joy of living in the Present moment, not worrying about the past or the future. The joy of wonder, letting God surprise us everyday with the miracle of Life. I just read that at the Comcast Center in Philadelphia, there is a 50 Foot television screen, its actually an amazing site, there is, at all hours of the day at least 100 people just staring at the television screen. It is amazing what they did there, but I couldn't help thinking that God must be saying to Himself, if they want to be wowed, just open your eyes to the Wonder and Joy that He is spilling into the world in the smallest and biggest detail of creation. Joy in my eyes is simply active trust, and active Faith in what we believe about God. If He is Good and Loving and Holy, then every moment should be lived in Joy and Trust. If He is cruel, hard, and mean, then our life should be full of fear and doubt, but that is not the God of Jesus Christ, if you have any doubts read slowly the parable of the Good Samaritan, and the Prodigal son. If we profess with our minds and hearts that Jesus is Lord, and that God is Good, in faith let us walk in Joy! Because it will build us up and those around us!