Finding Joy

I was in a bookstore today and I saw this book about finding Joy in life and it dawned on me that the passion that I have been wishing for will forever elude me without joy in my life. But how? Joy is such a simple word so why is it not easy to find? My days are often filled with laughter but thinking about this as I type, humor is not quite the same as having joy, is it? I mean, there are so many things everyday that can annoy me but I also see the funny side of it all so that my stress level never quite gets off the ground. Yet, I realize that inspite of having humor and laughter in my life, there seems to be a lack of real joy. The kind of joy that makes one look forward to the day at hand..the kind that makes you want to wake up in the morning...the kind that makes your eyes sparkle and brings a smile to your face...the kind that makes one sing and feel energized. I want to be joyful like that, but where do I start? What is the biggest barrier to my experiencing joy despite any circumstance in my life?

Ulrich Zwingli, the brilliant sixteenth-century Swiss reformer wrote: 'Man increasingly loves himself, seeks to please himself, trusts himself, credits everything to himself, thinks that he sees what is straight and what is crooked, and believes that what he approves everyone ought to approve, even his Creator.' Make no mistake, that is a barrier. It had to come down. It requires unconditional surrender, and once that takes place, joy is often the first thing to break in through the broken barrier."

Oh...okay, but how?