There are random moments throughout each day… a burst of laughter from my children, gazing out the kitchen window and looking out at the Rainbow Lorikeets dancing from branch to branch in the wattle trees, a saucepan of chai tea brewing on the stove top,… when I feel the spirit of Joy flow through the caverns of my being. It is in this moment that I am grateful for the gift of life. I have come to realise that a life without Joy is a life that never reaches its full potential, if anything, the absence of Joy from one’s life is like a fresh blossom devoid of water and sunlight. Before long the blossom soon begins to wilt and lose its vibrant colour and eventually fade and die long before it reaches the beautiful, majestic flower it was created to be.

Perhaps you are in place devoid of life, much like I was when my life was in the pit of depression, I want to encourage you, there is hope and you will return to joy!  Today if you will choose love, take your eyes off  yourself and your problems and ask God ‘who can I love today’? When you do this, your mind cannot be meditating on how bad you feel, but instead is consumed with how you can be a blessing.

This morning I awoke feeling a little flat, hormonal and emotional  😦 but, as I do every morning, I asked God to ‘show me someone who needs love today’… as I did this I felt joy begin to bubble up in my spirit. You see the happiest people in this world are not the takers no-no, the happiest people in this world are the givers! By choosing to think about giving/showing love to someone, you are harnessing the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of love and it is in this act that you increase the ‘feel good’ chemicals in the brain, your heart starts to feel alive again and you feel a return to joy!

 Jesus’ life and death is the perfect representation of love leading to joy whereby He chose to love us by laying down His life for all mankind, He endured the cross and He returned to joy. In John 10:18 (NKJV) Jesus said of His life,

“No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again…” here He is ‘choosing’ to love for the joy that awaited Him, “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” Hebrews 12:2 (NKJV)

Choose today to ‘love on purpose’… and watch as the spirit of Joy apprehends you x

“Joy is the infallible sign of the presence of God.”
―    Pierre Teilhard de Chardin