A theme that is so prevalent even in the world today especially around the holiday seasons...joy! It is also something that very soon disappears and escapes us. The Lord Himself applies that concept of joy even amist what the disciples deemed as UN-joyful events that would take place. We too must see this joy in the coming holiday seasons and as we live day to day.

If there is anyone who can be joyful it is the child of God! He is entitled to it! Many times we have frowns and it is not right. Joy is a feeling of delight and jubilation. The very opposite of misery. What joy did Christ have as He faced leaving the disciples and facing the cross? When we speak of joy it is more than just the emotional and sporadic feelings even the world has when "the wind is in our sails." Christ had joy in the face of suffering as He had joy as He saw what awaited Him at the end. He saw THROUGH that suffering! For the child of God there is joy in tribulation as it works patience and he can be assured and see the end...a JOY...the promise incorruptible! Glory!

We have the joy of heaven even though we have sorrow, pain, suffering, and trouble from time to time. God gives us the joy that our Lord Jesus Christ took hold of! Christ saw the exultation and understood that. And He took hold of that! That is the same joy He imparts to us and we must carry it with us! He as the firstborn, the begotten of the dead, gives us this as we sit in the realm of brothers and sisters in Christ! It can NEVER be taken away from us! What is your only comfort in life and in death? Nothing can change that we belong to Him for time and eternity and no one can ever take it away! And as the Catechism says "how do we know this?" From teh gospel and it is the underlying foundation of being joyful! Do we stand still long enough to see how wonderful it is that we were born "in here" and not "out there" in the covenant?! Do we know what we really have?! "That your joy may be FULL." He told the disciples "you are MY disciples...you live out of Me!" The very Spirit He imparts to them and to us we live out of! He gives us His commandments that we may live in them so He can remain in us...or, if we do not live according to them we will not have lover for one another and will not have or find joy! We will not find joy walking against God's commandments. Joy will elude us as a child who knows he did something wrong. Peace will escape us when we cannot look God straight in the face! And we will receive the chastening of the Holy Spirit and God upon us!

This joy is enjoyed. That joy maintains itself within us but also comes to full fruition! There is not must joy in the world (even they see that,) but we traverse this world of suffering and pain and death like Christ and we see the end of it all! The joy that belongs to us in the church and amidst this live. The undergirding joy given to us...that belongs to us in Christ!