Some words on joy (not mine)

"No man can live without joy" is what Thomas Aquinas wrote. And I confess, it is true, I have known many dead waiting to die . . .

While I may not always feel joy, God asks me to give thanks in all things because he knows that the feeling of joy begins in the action of thanksgiving.

I know it well after a day smattered with  rowdiness and worn a bit ragged with bickering. Joy doesn't negate all other emotions - joy transcends all other emotions.

Only self can kill joy.

I'm the one doing this to me. The demanding of my own will is the singular force that smothers out joy - nothing else. Dare I ask what I think I deserve? A life with no discomfort, no inconveniencecs? What do I really deserve? . . .

My own wild desire to protect my joy at all costs is the exact force that kills my joy . . .

"No one who ever said to God, Thy will be done, and meant it with his heart, ever failed to find joy - not just in heaven, or even down the road in the future in this world, but in the world at that very moment," asserts Peter Kreeft. "Every other Christian who has ever lived has found exactly the same thing in his own experience. It is an experiment that has been performed over and over again billions of times, always with the same result . . . ."

And I hear it soft too, what all his life speaks: Joy is in the acquiescing.

-Ann Voskamp